# LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 



r 



f UNITED STATES'OF AMERICA, f 



CHRISTIANITY TESTED BY EMLNENT MEN; 



Btinjj Britf Sfettti&ts of 



CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



By MERRITT CALDWELL, A.M. 



1^ \0^.nm. 

x:^77;jQ-r-{y;' 



WITH AN INTnODUCTlON 



BY REV. S. xM. VAIL, A. M. 



N£iu-|)ork 



PUBLISHED BY LANE & SCOTT, 

2 M u 1 b e r r y - s t r e e t . 
JOSEPH L O N G K I N G , P 11 I N T E K . 



^^^■^^^c^ru^ 'BcU^- ^ ■ex-' 



.C3 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by 

LANE & SCOTT, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District 
of New-York. 






CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 

Introdlctory Remarks Page 15 

Sir Matthew Hale 18 

Dr. John Godman 21 

Dr. Judsox 29 

Leonard Euler 32 

Professor Hubbard 35 

Nathan Smith 37 

Arjiand du Plests de Richelieu 42 

Julius Mazarin 43 

Sir Thomas Smith 43 

Henry Beaufort 44 

Cesar Borgia , 45 

Thomas Wolsey 45 

Duke of Buckingham 4() 

George Cuvier 50 

George Lyttlkton 53 

Gilbert West: 50 

Roger Sherman 57 

CHAPTER H. 

Signers of the Declaration of iNDErENDExcE : — 

Samuel Ada3is, LL.D (il 

Robert Treat Paine, LL.D 62 

Matthew Thornton 02 



4 CONTENTS. 

Signers of the Declaration of Independence : — 

SAMUEji Huntingdon Page 63 

William Williams 64 

Philip Livingston 64 

Eichard Stockton 65 

John Witherspoon, D.D., LL.D 65 

John Hart.. 66 

Benja^iin Rush, M.D., LL.D 66 

John Morton 67 

James Smith 67 

Samuel Chase 68 

Thomas Stone 68 

Francis Lightfoot Lee 68 

Benjamin Franklin 69 

Humphrey Davy 73 

William Jones 75 

John Selden 78 

James Gardiner 79 

George Washington 82 

liEVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS : 

Colonel Timothy Pickering 90 

Colonel Isaac Shelby 90 

M ajor-General Benjamin Lincoln 91 

Major-General John Brooks 91 

Brigadier-General Eliezer Brooks 92 

General Matthew Clarkson 92 

CHAPTER III. 

Isaac Newton 93 

David Rittenhouse 96 

James Crichton , 101 

John Philip Baratier 102 

Blaise Pascal 104 

Hugo Grotius 108 

Jeremiah Horrox 110 

Peter Gassendi • 113 



CONTENTS. 5 

John Janeway Page 115 

James Brainerd Taylor 119 

CHAPTER IV. 

Governors of Plymouth Colony: — 

John Carver 123 

William Bradford 124 

Edward Winslow 124 

Governors of Massachusetts Colony : — 

John Winthrop 12o 

John Endicott 125 

Jonathan Belcher 126 

Governors of Massachusetts : — 

James Bowdoin 128 

Samuel Adams 130 

John Brooks 130 

Lieutenant-Governors of Massachusetts: — 

Samuel Phillips, LL,D 131 

William Phillips 133 

Chief Justices op Massachusetts : — 

Isaac Parker, LL.D 134 

Theophilus Parsons, LL.D 135 

CHAPTER V. 

John Winthrop 137 

Francis Bacon 140 

Robert Boyle 147 

John Locke 151 

Joseph Addison,,. ,, 155 

General Remarks 158 

Metaphysicians : — 

Descartes 163 

Thomas Reid, D.D., F.R.S .' 163 

DuGALD Stewart 164 

Thomas Brown, M.D 166 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 167 



6 CONTENTS. 

Joshua Reynolds Page 168 

Samuel Johnson 170 

Edmund Burke 175 

James Necker 178 

CHAPTER VI. 
Poets : — 

Percy Bys she Shelley 181 

Edmund Spenser 186 

Sir Philip Sidney 187 

John Milton 188 

Sir John Denham 191 

Wentworth Dillon 191 

John, Earl of Rochester 193 

Abraham Cowley 198 

Edmund Waller 201 

John Phillips 203 

Matthew Prior 203 

Nicholas Rowe 204 

Alexander Pope 204 

James Thomson 206 

William Collins 207 

William Cowper 208 

James Beattie 209 

William Wordsworth 211 

Walter Scott 211 

Edmund Smith 214 

William King 215 

Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax 215 

John Hughes 215 

Sir Richard Blackmore 216 

Elijah Fenton 216 

Nicholas Boileau...... 217 

Fenelon 218 



INTRODUCTION. 



The lamented author of these sketches had 
a yearning love for the welfare of the young. 
At an early period of his life he became a 
teacher. For twenty years he continued in 
this honourable and useful vocation. His time, 
his talents and his attainments, and, finally, 
his health and life, were laid down, a willing 
sacrifice for the glory of God and the good of 
the young. 

The present volume is one of the evidences 
of his solicitude for this class of persons, and 
especially for their spiritual welfare. Whether 
as principal of the Maine Wesleyan Seminary, 
or as professor in Dickinson College, Professor 
Caldwell was ever active in leading young 
men to the foot of the cross. He felt the 
need of something like the present volume, 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

Avhich might be put into the hands of young 
men, especially of such as are sceptically 
inclined. The human mind, by nature, is 
averse to God, and will not receive the way 
of salvation by the cross. 

How many young men in our schools and 
colleges, of considerable talents and reading, 
are not only at heart unbelievers, but some- 
times professedly so ! They have never ex- 
amined the evidences of Christianity, but 
brace and fortify themselves with great 
names. They say, Jefferson, and Gibbon, 
and Hume, were at least doubters, if not 
positive disbelievers in the whole system of 
the Christian religion. It cannot be dishon- 
ourable, it may not be contrary to truth, to 
follow in the steps of such men. And thus a 
hardy bravado takes possession of the young 
mind, and there begins to be a fearful trifling 
with spiritual and eternal interests. In this 
little book the authority of great names, in 
every department of learning and honour, is 
made to subserve a better purpose. The 
author has looked over the ranks of the laity, 
in our OAvn and other countries. He has 



INTRODUCTION. 79 

interrogated the greatest philosophers, states- 
men, jurists, poets and artists, of modern 
times, as to their opinions on the Christian 
religion. And all brought together consti- 
tutes a body of evidence for Christianity, 
enough to neutralize, a hundred times, the 
mere opinions of such men as Lord Boling- 
broke. Gibbon and Hume. 

It is not only a body of evidence for Chris- 
tianity, but for its experimental character, — 
affording a delightful view of its practical 
influence on great minds. Washington and 
Newton, Bacon and Pascal, are seen to have 
been experimental Christians, — men of prayer 
— often retiring to hold communion with God 
the Father of spirits. The celebrated Boyle, 
speaking of this last-named distinguished 
man, says : *^ A hundred volumes of religious 
discourses are not of so much avail to confound 
the impious as a simple account of the life of 
Pascal. His humility and his devotion mor- 
tify the libertines more than if they were 
attacked by a dozen missionaries. They can 
no longer assert that piety is confined to little 
minds, when they behold the highest degree 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

of it in a geometrician of the first rank, the 
most acute metaphysician, and one of the 
most penetrating mincls that ever existed.'^ 

One such testimony of a candid and dis- 
criminating mind, such as PascaFs, is worth 
more for sustaining the reality of experimental 
religion, than all the reasonings of infidelity 
and formalism. He testifies of a land that 
he has seen, and infidelity of one it has not 
seen. He speaks from his own consciousness, 
the most certain ground of belief ; while infi- 
delity at best can only argue from remote 
analogies, the most uncertain of all evidence. 
A triumphant argument, we hold, therefore, 
is brought out in these sketches, for the reality 
of experimental religion — an argument which, 
it is almost needless to say, is confirmed by 
the experience of all truly converted men, by 
the word of Grod, and the fitness of things. A 
religion that does not affect the heart as well 
as the intellect, that does not soothe the sor- 
rows of man, and bring peace and quietness to 
his troubled spirit, is after all worth but little. 
For what signify outward comforts, and even 
splendours, if the soul is under the bondage of 



INTRODUCTION. ll 

fear, and without the inward life of the Divine 
Spirit? 

It has already been hinted that these 
sketches are confined to eminent Christian 
laymen. The author himself was a layman, 
and thus continued during life, though fre- 
quently importuned to enter the ministry. It 
should also be said that they were originally 
published in the Maine Wesleyan Journal. 
They were commenced in January, 1839, and 
continued from time to time for something 
more than two years, with the original inten- 
tion of carrying them on much further. In- 
deed, materials were collected for this purpose. 
But in the spring of 1841 they were interrupted 
by the ill health of the author ; and after his 
recovery, his mind was so far diverted to other 
objects, that he was led to a'bandon this, at 
least for the time being. 

His own views and feelings, in entering 
upon and prosecuting this work, will appear 
from his own introductory remarks, and from 
a subsequent letter, a few extracts from which 
we will here present the reader. 

He remarks : ** These sketches were first 



12 INTRODUCTION 

intended mainly for the young, who, whatever 
else they may have learned, may not have 
learned that the most eminent men of modern 
times have been the devoted advocates of 
Christianity. This, the writer of these sketches 
did not early perceive — his attention was not 
early directed to this subject. But here 
another direction is given to this subject. 
We are told that Christian biography may 
serve as a confirmation of the faith even of 
the sincere and humble Christian. To thou- 
sands who are destined, in the order of Provi- 
dence, to move in the lower walks of life, and, 
perhaps, to see pride and vice triumphant, 
while virtue and unassuming worth pine in 
lonely, and perhaps starving, solitude — to 
thousands such, I say, the question must have 
presented itself : ' If Christianity is true, why 
are not those who take the lead in society 
its advocates T To such as propose this ques- 
tion, these sketches say : Those who take 
the lead in most of the lower circles of so- 
ciety, are either those whom the world loves 
more because the world loves its oivn, and not 
because of the possession of any learning. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

talent, or real wortli ; or who liave devoted 
their conscience upon the altar of their ambi- 
tion, and having intellect enough to learn the 
truth, still love darkness rather than light, 
because their deeds are evil. And these sketches 
further say to such inquirers : ' Look beyond 
the narrow circle of your own neighbourhood 
or town — look out upon those who have taken 
the lead in carrying on all the most important 
enterprises of the world, and whose names 
stand as beacon-lights along the paths of 
science, shining brighter and brighter with 
the lapse of years, and when you contemplate 
such a one, then will you find a Christian,^'' 

Let the young man, or even the old man, 
Avho has not had the means of pushing his 
inquiries among the speculative objections to 
Christianity, or among the speculative evi- 
dences by which it is supp(Ti:*ted, remember 
this, that no objection has ever been urged 
which has not been reviewed, and fully con- 
futed, by the researches of the wonderful men 
whose names are presented in these sketches. 

We would close our introductory remarks 
by commending this little volume, containing 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

SO bright a galaxy of the stars of our common 
Christianity, to the blessing of God. May 
the design of its lamented and pious author 
be fulfilled, who desired, first of all, in this 
and in everything else, to be useful in bring- 
ing souls to Christ, and in promoting the 
glory of our common Lord. 

Stephen M. Vail. 
Concord, N. H., May 8, 1851. 



SKETCHES 



EMINENT CHRISTIAN MEN 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS — SIR MATTHEW HALE — DR. JOHN 

G0D3IAN DR. JUDSON ^LEONARD EULER ^PROFESSOR JOHN 

HUBBARD — DR. NATHAN SMITH RICHELIEU, MAZARIN, AND 

SIR THOMAS SMITH ^BEAUFORT, BORGIA, AND CARDINAL 

WOLSEY DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM — BARON (GEORGe) GUVIER 

— LORD LITTLETON DR. GILBERT WEST ROGER SHER- 
MAN. 

mTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

The great truths of Christianity rest not on 
the opinions of men, nor on the character of 
those who embrace them ; yet our Saviour 
himself has said, " Ye are the light of the 
world." Christians then are the representa- 
tives of Christianity. From this responsi- 
bility we cannot free ourselves, nor would we 
if we could. It would but take from us one 
of our highest motives to represent its princi- 
ples faithfully. 



16 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

It is ill vain, that we point one of the ordin- 
ary cla^s of sceptics, or men of the world, to 
the Bible to learn what Christianity is. He 
at once refers you to those who professedly 
adopt its principles as the guide of their lives, 
and thus brings Christianity to the test, not 
of the purity of the Gospel precepts, but to 
the imperfect standard of practical morality 
among professed Christians. So it is, so it 
always has been, so we presume it always will 
be, while the human heart retains its natural 
perverseness. 

But this is not all. In such reference, the 
sceptic is always sure to direct the attention 
to the more unworthy of those who bear the 
Christian name, and even goes so far as to as- 
sert, that none but weak minds have ever been 
entangled in its sophistries, or yielded an as- 
sent to its absurdities. If Ave point him to 
the distinguished advocates of the Gospel sys- 
tem, who have enlightened the world by their 
science and by their mental power, we are 
only told of priestcraft^ and reminded that 
these men have all had their worldly interests 
combined with their apparent zeal in the cause 
of God. 

Such a course ought to have no influence, 
except upon the minds of the young and the 
unthinking. For, in the first place, the as- 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 17 

sumption is not a true one, and, in the second 
place, even if it were, the inference attempted 
to be drawn is not legitimate. The assump- 
tion is not correct, inasmuch as many of the 
most gifted intellects, and of the most richly 
endowed minds with which the world has ever 
been favoured, have yielded their assent to 
the truths of the Gospel. And the inference 
of the unbeliever is not legitimate, inasmuch 
as the principles of Christianity are eternally 
excellent: not less so, in the most corrupt 
ages of the Church, than when they liave 
been exemplified in all their native and essen- 
tial purity ; not less so, when those w^ho have 
taken on themselves the vows of religion prove 
recreant to their obligations, than when they 
adorn their professions by a godly w^alk and 
conversation. 

Still, so it is ; inferences are drawn from 
the character of those who profess the religion 
of Christ, as to the character of that religion 
itself. And so let it be ; but let not the 
character of those who assume the Christian 
name be mis-stated. 

In the following sketches professed clergy- 
men will be passed by on the ground, mainly, 
that their religious character is well known ; 
but other Christians, distinguished for great 
mental power, for great learning, or extraordi- 



18 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

nary piety, will be briefly noticed. We ask 
attention first to Sir Matthew Hale, one of 
England^s greatest statesmen and writers. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 

Sir Matthew Hale was born at Alderley, 
Gloucestershire, England, November 1, 1609. 
Before he had attained his fifth year, both his 
parents were removed by death. In early life 
he had the reputation of being an extraordi- 
nary proficient in learning, and before he was 
seventeen, was a member of Oxford College. 
In 1629, Mr. Hale was admitted a student at 
law in Lincoln's Inn. " Here,'' says his bio- 
grapher, " he brought to bear on his books the 
whole energy of his powerful mind. So in- 
tense was his ardour, that difficulties only 
stimulated him to exertion ; and for a while, 
he studied at the rate of sixteen hours a day." 
He soon attracted the notice of some of the 
most distinguished men of England, among 
whom was the illustrious Selden, whose friend- 
ship he shared during his life. Under the 
patronage, and sustained by the friendship of 
these renowned men, he prosecuted his studies 
with the greatest enthusiasm and diligence. 
*' So great was his mental vigour," we are 
told, *' that he regarded philosophical and 



SIR MATTHEAV HALE. 19 

mathematical pursuits as diversions, in which, 
when weary with studying law or theology, he 
found recreation.'' 

In 1653, Mr. Hale was created a sergeant 
at law; in 1654, was chosen a member of 
Parliament ; in 1660, received the commission 
of Lord Chief Baron of England ; and in 1671, 
succeeded Sir John Keyling, as Lord Chief 
Justice of the King's bench. Thus, as Sir 
Matthew Hale, Ave see him holding the very 
highest judicial trusts of England, the latter 
of which he retained, till, in person, he sur- 
rendered it to the king, and retired to the 
place of his birth, to pass in quiet the re- 
mainder of his days. 

Yet Sir Matthew Hale was a uniform, con- 
sistent, and devoted Christian. The integrity 
with which he discharged his public duties, is 
everywhere proverbial. His temperance was so 
strongly marked, that from about the time he 
entered on the study of the law, he even re- 
fused to drink the king's health, though that 
was deemed a distinguishing mark of loyalty, 
and the refusal often subjected him to uncivil 
treatment. He made no use even of wine. 
His observance of the Lord^s day was so strict, 
that his example is often quoted even to the 
present time. So uniform was he in this, that 
for thirty-six years he is said never to have 



20 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

failed once in going to church on the Sabhath. 
His reverence for the Bihle^ as the word of 
God, was most profound. " There is no book 
like the Bible/' said he, " for excellent learn- 
ing, wisdom, and use.'' 

But the piety of Sir M. Hale is not left to 
inference. Hear the testimony of the pious 
and excellent Baxter, when speaking of Sir 
MatthcAv as he drew near to the close of his 
life : — " It is not the least of my pleasures," 
says he, " that I have lived some years in his 
more than ordinary love and friendship, and 
that we are now waiting which shall be first 
in heaven, whither, he saith, he is going with 
full content and acquiescence in the will of a 
gracious God,, and doubts not but we shall 
shortly live together. O what a blessed world 
would this be, were but the generality of 
magistrates such as he !" 

Another illustration of the piety of Sir M. 
Hale, from his own pen, is not less interesting : 
'' My intensest love to God," said he, " is my 
duty ; I cannot exceed my proportion. It is 
my wisdom, for I fix my heart upon that which 
is more than worthy of my love. It is my 
happiness, for I am joined to that which is my 
chiefest good. The best of creatures is too 
narroAv for the compass of my love. There is 
not fulness enough in it to answer my desire — 



DR. JOHN GODMAN. 21 

it is too short and temporary. It will die, 
when my soul, and the motions of it, will live, 
and so again want that on which to fix. But 
in my love to God, I shall find an overflowing 
fulness, that will fill up the most capacious 
and intense st gaspings and outgoings of my 
love — a fulne^ that will continue to all eter- 
nity — a fulness that will satisfy my soul, and 
yet increase my love. New and higher dis- 
coveries will eternally be let in unto me, which 
my soul shall everlastingly pursue, and in 
pursuing, enjoy with delight and blessed- 
ness.'^ 

Such a man and such a Christian was Sir 
Matthew Hale. He died Dec. 25, 1676. 



DR. JOHN GODMAK 

John Godman was born in Annapolis, in the 
State of Maryland. Before he Avas two years 
of age, he lost his mother ; and before he was 
five, he was, as he once said, '' fatherless and 
friendless.'^ The little property that was left 
liim he never received, and thus he was thrown 
out upon the world to find his way through it. 
In early life, he was indented an apprentice 
to a printer in Baltimore. In 1813 he left 
this business, and entered as a sailor on board 
the Flotilla, which was then stationed in tlie 



22 CHRISTIAN BIOr:^RAPHY. 

Chesapeake Bay. At the close of the war^ 
being then fifteen years of age, and at liberty 
to pursue the natural bent of his own mind, he 
commenced the study of medicine. In the 
prosecution of the science of anatomy, he sur- 
passed all his fellows, and sometime before he 
was graduated, was called to the chair of 
anatomy in the University of Maryland, where 
he was then a student, to supply the place of 
his preceptor, who was taken from his lectures 
in consequence of a fractured extremity. He 
was specially marked by his teachers for the 
extent and accuracy of his knowledge. 

After he was graduated, he continued to 
prosecute his studies with the same zeal which 
had hitherto characterized him. Natural 
history and the languages came in for a share 
of his attention. In a few years he was called 
to the Professorship of Anatomy in the Medi- 
cal College of Ohio, where he remained one 
year ; and in 1826, was called to fill the same 
chair in Eutgers Medical College, in the city 
of New- York. Here he had not completed his 
second course of lectures, when declining 
health compelled him to leave New- York, and 
to seek a more genial climate in one of the 
West India Islands. 

From this disease Dr. Godman never re- 
covered, but continued to devote his every 



DR. JOHN GODMAN. 2$ 

hour to the cause of letters, with an enthusi- 
asm rarely if ever equalled, till he terminated 
his life at the age of thirty-two. Though 
thus early called from the pursuits of science, 
he made larger acquisitions than most minds 
are capable of in a long life. His success, as 
a lecturer on anatomy, has never been 
equalled in this country ; his ^' Natural His- 
tory of American Quadrupeds '^ is the most 
ample and elaborate which has ever been pub- 
lished ; and he had acquired such a knowledge 
of the Latin, Greek, French, German, Danish, 
Spanish, and Italian languages, as to read and 
translate them with fluency, and to write seve- 
ral of them with elegance. 

Such was Dr. Godman, as a scholar and as 
a man of science. Let us turn to his Christian 
character. 

Till the winter of 1827, Dr. G. was scepti- 
cal ; and, to use his own language, had be- 
come an infidel, rejecting revelation, and cast- 
ing all the evidences of an existing God be- 
neath his feet. A visit to the death-bed of a 
Christian student, turned his attention to the 
Bible, which is the source of all light He im- 
mediately gave up the deductions of his per- 
verted reason, and, in the spirit of true philo- 
sophy, resorted to the instructions of Him who 
taught as never man taught. 



24 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

The success of liis application to this source 
of light and truth, appears in a letter which 
he addressed to a medical friend, Dr. Judson, 
then surgeon in the navy of the United States, 
and in the last stages of consumption : — 

'* Germantown, Dec. 25, 1828. 

" In relation to dying, my dear friend, you 
talk like a sick man and just as I used to do 
when very despondent. Death is a debt we 
all owe to nature, and must eventually ensue 
from a mere wearing out of the machine, if not 
from disease. The time when, makes no dif- 
ference in the act of dying to the individual ; 
for, after all, it terminates in corporeal insen- 
sibility, let the preceding anguish be never so 
severe. Nature certainly has a strong abhor- 
rence to this cessation of corporeal action, and 
all animals have a dread of death who are con- 
scious of its approach. A part of our dread of 
death is purely physical, and is avoidable only 
by a philosophical conviction of its necessity ; 
but the greater part of our dread, and the ter- 
rors with which the avenues to the grave are 
surrounded, are from another, and a more po- 
tent source. ' 'Tis conscience that makes 
cowards of us all,' and forces us by our ter- 
rors to confess that we dread something be- 
yond physical dissolution, and that we are ter- 



DR. JOHN GODMAN. 25 

rifled, not at merely ceasing to breathe, but 
that we have not lived as we ought to have 
done, have not effected the good that was 
within the compass of our abilities, and neg- 
lected to exercise the talents we possessed to 
the greatest advantage. The only remedy for 
this fear of death is to be sought by approach- 
ing the Author of all things in the way pre- 
scribed by himself, and not according to our 
own foolish imaginations. Humiliation of 
pride, denial of self, subjection of evil tem- 
pers and dispositions, and an entire submis- 
sion to his will for support and direction, are 
the best preparatives for such an approach. 
A perusal of the Gospels, in a spirit of real in- 
quiry, after a direction how to act, will cer- 
tainly teach the way. In these Gospels the 
Saviour himself has preached his own doc- 
trines, and he who runs may read. He has 
prescribed the course — he shows how the ap- 
proval and mercy of God may be won; he 
shows how awfully corrupt is man^s nature, 
and how deadly his pride and stubbornness 
of heart, which cause him to try every subter- 
fuge to avoid the humiliating confession of 
his own weakness, ignorance, and folly. But 
the same blessed hand has stripped death of 
all the terrors which brooded around the 
grave, and converted the gloomy receptacle 



26 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

of our mortal remains into tlie portal of life 
and light. O let me die the death of the 
righteous; let my last end and future state 
be like his! 

'' This is all I know on the subject. I am 
no theologian, and have as great an aversion 
to priestcraft as one can entertain. I was 
once an infidel, as I told you in the West In- 
dies. I became a Christian from conviction, 
produced by the candid inquiry recommended 
to you. I know of no other way in which 
death can be stripped of its terrors ; certainly 
none better can be wished. Philosophy is a 
fool, and pride a madman. Many persons die 
with what is called manly firmness ; that is, 
having acted a part all their lives according 
to their prideful creed, they must die game. 
They put on as smooth a face as they can, to 
impose on the spectators, and die firmly. But 
this is all deception; the true state of their 
minds at the very time, nine times out of ten, 
is worse than the most horrible imaginings 
even of hell itself. Some who have led lives 
adapted to sear their conscience, and petrify 
all the moral sensibilities, die with a kind of 
indifference similar to that with which a hard- 
ened convict submits to a new infliction of dis- 
graceful punishment. But the man who dies 
as a man ought to die, is the humble-minded, 



DR. JOHN GODMAN. 27 

believing Christian — one who has tasted and 
enjoyed all the blessings of creation; who has 
had an enlightened view of the wisdom and 
glory of his Creator; who has felt the vanity 
of merely worldly pursuits and motives, and 
been permitted to know the mercies of a 
blessed Kedeemer as he approaches the narrow 
house appointed for all the living. 

" Physical death may cause his senses to 
shrink and fail at the trial; but his mind, 
sustained by the Eock of Ages, is serene and 
unwavering. He relies not on his own righte- 
ousness, for that would be vain ; but the arms 
of mercy are beneath him — the ministering 
spirits of the Omnipotent are around him. 
He does not die manfully, but he rests in 
Jesus; he blesses his friends, he casts his hope 
on One all powerful to sustain, and mighty to 
save; then sleeps in peace. He is dead — but 
liveth ; for He who is the resurrection and the 
life has declared, ' Whoso believeth in me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live. And 
whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall 
never die.^ '^ 

This letter is sufficient to establish the piety 
of Dr. Godman. His pious trust in God sus- 
tained him during a protracted illness, and 
was his solace in death. A friend who was 
his constant companion during his sickness, 



28 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

and witnessed his last moments, writes thus : 
— " You ask me to give you an account of his 
last moments; they were such as have robbed 
me of all terror of death, and will afford me 
lasting comfort through life. The same self- 
composure and entire resignation which were 
so remarkable through his whole sickness, 
supported him to the end. O, it was not death 
— it was a release from mortal misery to ever- 
lasting happiness! Such calmness when he 
prayed for us all, — such a heavenly compo- 
sure, even till the breath left him, you would 
have thought he was going only a short jour- 
ney. During the day his sufferings had been 
almost beyond enduring. Frequently did he 
pray that the Lord would give him patience 
to endure all till the end, knowing that it 
could not be many hours; and truly his 
prayers were heard. * Lord Jesus, receive my 
soul,' were the last words he uttered ; and his 
countenance appeared as if he had a foretaste 
of heaven even before his spirit left this 
world.'' 



DR. JUDBON. 29 



DR. JIJDSOK 

Rather as an appendix to the biographical 
sbetch of Dr. Grodman, I here present an ac- 
count of the conversion and death of Dr. Jud- 
son, to whom, when in the last stage of con- 
sumption, the letter of Dr. Godman, as given 
before, was addressed. 

The eulogist of Dr. Godman says, in regard 
to the letter thus addressed to Dr. Judson: — 

" This letter, which so truly contrasts the 
death-bed scene of the infidel with that of the 
Christian, so beautifully portrays the history 
of the change which had been effected in Dr. 
Godman's own sentiments and affections, and 
so clearly points the benighted wanderer to the 
true source of life and light, was not lost upon 
his friend to whom it was addressed. It de- 
scribed his condition, and it reached his heart. 

'' Dr. Judson, though religiously instructed 
when young, having a pious clergyman for his 
father, and another for his elder brother, (Dr. 
Judson, the late distinguished missionary in 
India,) yet had long since freed himself 
from what he called the prejudices of educa- 
tion, the shackles of priestcraft, and was rang- 
ing tlie fields of infidelity. He had acquired 
wealth and reputation ; was an estimable man 



30 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

in all the domestic relations of life, and a 
highly respected member of our profession; 
but the self-denying doctrines of the Saviour 
were too humbling to his proud spirit, and he 
could not submit to their influence. At the 
time he received Dr. Godman^s letter, how- 
ever, he was gloomy and despondent; looking 
forward with fearful forebodings to the period 
of his dissolution, which seemed not far dis- 
tant. He had no confidence but that of the 
sceptic, — no hope but that of ceasing to be. 
Aware of the fatal nature of the disease under 
which he had lingered for years, he had long 
been arming himself to meet the king of ter- 
rors with composure, that he might die like a 
philosopher — ' ivith manly firmness;^ but, as 
he drew nearer to the grave, the clouds and 
darkness thickened around him, and he began 
to fear that there might be something beyond 
this narrow prison. He had hitherto refused 
all religious intercourse, but now his infidelity 
began to give way, and he inquired with soli- 
citude, ' Is there such a thing as the new birth ? 
and if so, in what does it consist?^ He was 
directed to the Gospels for the answer. He 
at length consented to make the investigation 
recommended by Dr. Godman. He took up 
the New Testament, and read it in the spirit 
of candid inquiry. A conviction of the truth 



DR. JUDSON. 31 

of its doctrines fastened upon him. He now 
solicited the advice and prayers of a pious 
clergyman. Yet he could not consent to re- 
linquish the sentiments which he had so long- 
cherished without the clearest proof ; and he 
disputed every inch of ground with great acute- 
ness and ability ; but the truth Avas exhibited 
by this venerable divine (the Rev. William 
Eyland) with such force and simplicity, that 
it overcame every argument he could produce, 
and he saw clearly the folly of his sceptical 
opinions. The clouds were dissij)ated, light 
broke in uj)on his mind, and he was enabled 
to take hold of tlie promises. The remaining 
days of his life were devoted to fervent prayer, 
and the constant study of the Scriptures, which 
filled his soul with divine composure, and en- 
abled him to rely with undoubting confidence 
on the infinite merits of his Redeemer, and 
with his last breath to cry, * Peace, peace. ^ If 
he did not die with ' manly firmness,^ he * 7'e8t' 
ed 171 Jesus. ^ ^^ 

It is worthy of remark by the young, that 
we here have the names of Godman and Jud- 
son, of Sewall and Ryland, honourably asso- 
ciated with Christianity. They were each and 
all most noble men, and each has entered into 
his rest above, liaving proved the power of the 
religion of Christ both in life and in death. 



32 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



LEONARD EULER. 

Leonard Euler was born at Basil, in 1707, 
Avhere he was educated. His early academical 
tasks were performed with wonderful ease, in- 
somuch that a large portion of his time was 
left for the pursuit of mathematics and philo- 
sophy ; and his success in these branches soon 
obtained for him the distinguished attention 
and esteem of John Bernouilli, one of the 
chief mathematicians of Europe. At the age 
of sixteen years, he was admitted to the de- 
gree of M. A., on which occasion he obtained 
great applause by delivering a Latin discourse, 
wherein he drew a comparison between the 
philosophy of Newton and the Cartesian sys- 
tem. Li 1727, at the age of twenty, he was 
appointed over the mathematical class, in the 
Academy of Science at Petersburg. His dif- 
ferent publications on the nature and propa- 
gation of sound, on curves, on the calculus in- 
tegrals, the movement of the celestial bodies, 
and other useful subjects, had already raised 
his reputation, and ranked him among the 
greatest of philosophers. The integral calcu- 
lus he carried to new degrees of perfection ; 
and by the astonishing powers of his mind, 



LEONARD EULEK. 33 

new light was thrown on all the branches of 
mathematical science. 

In 1730, Euler Avas appointed Professor of 
Natural Philosophy in the University of Pe- 
tersburg ; anci in 1733, was called to the chair 
of mathematics. In 1735, he finished the so- 
lution of an important problem, in three days, 
which his fellow-academicians asked four 
months to complete. Thus he continued to 
prosecute the sciences with indefatigable zeal, 
at Petersburg, and, by express invitation of 
the king of Prussia, at Berlin, successively re- 
ceiving large rewards for his scientific disco- 
veries, from the British parliament, and from 
the French king, till he terminated his life at 
the age of 76, in 1783. 

At the period of his death, Euler was a for- 
eign member of the Eoyal Academy of Sci- 
ences at Paris, member of the Imperial Aca- 
demy of Petersburg, ancient director of the 
Koyal Academy at Berlin, and fellow of the 
Royal Society of London. 

Few men of letters ever wrote so much as 
Euler. His printed works amount to thirty- 
eight volumes ; and the bare list of his Avorks 
(including his manuscripts) makes fourteen 
pages. 

" His memory shall endure," says one of 
his biographers, '' till science herself is no 



34 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

more.'' No generation lias ever embraced so 
many objects at one time, or lias equalled 
liim, either in the variety or the magnitude 
of his discoveries. He had read all the Latin 
classics, could repeat the whole iEneid of Vir- 
gil by heart ; was perfect master of ancient 
mathematical literature ; had the history of 
all ages and nations, even to the minutest 
facts, ever present to his mind ; was acquaint- 
ed with physic, botany, and chemistry ; and 
Avas possessed of every qualification that could 
render a man estimable. 

" Yet this man, accomplished as he was, was 
filled with respect for religion. His piety was 
sincere, and his devotion full of fervour. He 
went through all his Christian duties with the 
greatest attention. He loved all mankind ; 
and, if ever he felt a motion of indignation, it 
was against the enemies of religion — particu- 
larly against the declared apostles of infidel- 
ity. Against the objections of these, he de- 
fended revelation in a work published at 
Berlin, in 1747.'' 

As will be inferred from the foregoing quo- 
tation, this great philosopher was not merely 
a believer, but a devout Christian. Says an- 
other biographer : " His piety was ardent, but 
sincere ; he loved mankind, and defended the 
great truths of religion with earnestness and 



PROFESSOR HUBBARD. 35 

fidelity/' Where such minds have yielded 
assent, men of ordinary intellects should doubt 
with caution. 

This great Christian philosopher died of a 
fit of apoplexy. The stroke was sudden, and 
immediately fatal. 



PROFESSOR HUBBARD. 

It is believed that the following extract from 
the address of President Allen, occasioned by 
the death of Dr. Nathan Smith, will not be 
deemed inappropriate to the general object of 
these sketches. It describes the death-bed 
scene of Professor Hubbard, of Dartmouth 
College. Professor H. is represented as '^ a 
gentleman of science, — a gentleman also of 
feeling, of taste, and various accomplishments, 
— universally respected and greatly beloved ;" 
and is supposed to be John Hubbard, who was 
graduated at Dartmouth, in 1785. He died 
in 1810. 

** On the approach of death," says Dr. Allen, 
" his triumph was almost unequalled. The 
king of terrors was completely baffled and 
conquered. The dying disciple of the Re- 
deemer descanted most freely and copiously, 
and with a kind of celestial and transporting 
eloquence, on the grace and mercy of the Sa- 



36 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

vioiir, and on the scenes of the future and 
eternal state, — -on the visions of that upper 
world, which he was about to enter ; and so 
commingled with the expression of his well 
anchored hopes and lofty anticipations the ex- 
pression of his tender regard for those who 
stood around his bed, and animating exhorta- 
tions to the practice of holiness and the ser- 
vice of Christ, — closing, as he was skilled in 
all music, Avith such rapt hymnings to the 
praise of redeeming love — that every beholder 
was constrained to say, Surely the gospel is 
true, and there is power in religion ! I have 
often heard this scene mentioned by Chris- 
tians as the most wonderful scene they ever 
witnessed. 

" Of this scene Dr. Smith was a witness, 
for the dying man was his patient, as well 
as his companion and friend ; and it struck 
him with astonishment. He did not ascribe 
it to nervous influence, to an inflamed fancy, 
to wild delusion ; for the sufferer, or rather 
the beatified mortal, was a man of reason 
and argument, as well as of feeling. His 
words carried conviction to the mind as well 
as emotion to the heart. From this dark 
cloud of death the heat-lightning burst forth 
with a splendour which for the moment left 
no trace of the darkness; and the voice of 



NATHAN SMITH. 8f 

God was a voice of power, before which CA^ery 
soul bowed in reverence and awe.'' 

Who would not say, after all the vaunting 
of infidelity, " Let me live the life of the righte- 
ous, and let my last end be like his ?'' 



NATHAN SMITH. 

Nathan Smith was born in Eehoboth, Mass., 
Sept. 30, 1762 ; but while young removed with 
his parents to Chester, Vt. His early literary 
attainments were small. About the year 1786 
he was providentially a witness of a surgical 
operation, which awakened within his breast an 
irresistible desire of becoming a student of 
medicine. Preparatory study was called for ; 
but this he soon performed, and entered on 
his medical studies. In 1790, he received the 
degree of Bachelor of Medicine, at Hartford 
College, the only medical school then in New- 
England, and the third only in the United 
States. 

Enterprise was one of the leading traits in 
the character of Dr. S. Though raised on his 
father's farm, at the foot of the Green Moun- 
tains, and though yet master of but limited 
means, in a few years he projected a Medical 
School in connexion with Dartmouth College. 
His plan being approved by President Whee- 



38 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

lock, lie determined to proceed to Europe, 
where he might perfect his qualifications, and 
obtain the necessary apparatus for commencing 
so important an enterprise. In 1797, he at- 
tended lectures in Edinburgh and in Glasgow, 
passed some months in London, and returned 
to open his lectures in 1798, which were deliv- 
ered in one of the rooms in Dartmouth College. 
As an evidence of the respect in which he was 
held abroad, soon after he left London, he was 
elected a corresponding member of the Lon- 
don Medical Society. 

Dr. S. was appointed sole Professor in the 
Medical School of Dartmoath College ; and 
for twelve years lectured himself on all the 
branches usually taught in medical schools, 
assisted only in two courses in regard to che- 
mistry. Though thus single handed and alone, 
the school flourished under his care, and rose 
to great distinction and usefulness. In 1823 
he was invited to the chair of the Theory and 
Practice of Physic and Surgery, in the School 
about to be opened at College. Here he la- 
boured, sustaining the reputation previously 
acquired ; and in 1821, he was called to take 
charge of the Medical School connected with 
Bowdoin College, in the State of Maine. 

Here also he commenced, as he had done at 
Dartmouth, delivering lectures on the various 



NATHAN SMITH. 8|| 

subjects, with the exception of chemistry ; — 
aided, however, in anatomy by the skilful 
hand of him who became his successor, the 
lamented Professor Wells. .He continued his 
lectures here for four years, and withdrew to 
give his whole attention to the medical estab- 
lishment at New-Haven. 

" Dr. Smith,'^ says President Allen, '• estab- 
lished the fourth medical school in the United 
States. He lived afterwards thirty-one years, 
in which period he saw nearly twenty other 
similar institutions, organized and flourishing 
in different parts of the country, attended 
perhaps by two thousand students. And to 
what more than to him is to be ascribed this 
vast change in the medical advantages of 
America? Who can estimate the value of 
the results, which may be traced to the bless- 
ing of God on the enterprise of one man ; and 
that man unlettered and unknown, till he was 
nearly thirty years of age T^ 

About the middle of July, 1828, he was 
seized with a severe illness, from which he 
never entirely recovered. He closed his life 
on the 26th of January, 1829, aged sixty- 
seven. 

Professor Smitli combined in his character 
great intellectual power, great professional 
skill and fidelity, and most of those qualities 



40 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

of the heart which secure the affections of so- 
ciety. ^ But like too many others, though 
" exemplary in morals, instinctively kind and 
benevolent in disposition, honourable in senti- 
ment, skilful, learned, and useful,^^ he came 
down to the bed of sickness and death, without 
giving any practical attention to the subject 
of religion. Indeed it would be interesting to 
inquire, how far a constant devotion to the 
charities of life may satisfy the conscience 
though in the neglect of piety to God. 

But, *-the death-bed ^s a detector of the 
heart.^^ Here conscience, however smothered 
and silenced it may have been by the busy 
and anxious cares of life, speaks out and 
makes itself heard. Men, less philosophical, 
less disingenuous, less honest, than was Pro- 
fessor Smith, may still suppress the deep-heav- 
ing emotions of such an hour, and resolve in 
the pride of their hearts to die as they have 
lived. Not so with him. "In his last sick- 
ness he requested the counsel and the prayers 
of several ministers of the gospel, who, at his 
bed-side, assisted him in his devotions and 
supplications for mercy. And finally, when 
one of his friends asked him, whether in com- 
municating the sad intelligence of his death 
to one of his sons, he might say, that 'he died 
in the faith and hope of the gospel?' he pro- 



NATHAN SMITH. 41 

fessecl that such was the fact, and wished his 
friend thus to write.'' 

Tlie life and death of Professor Smith will 
furnish the reader with many points of inter- 
esting reflection. 



There have been thousands, many of them 
among those who have been the benefactors of 
man, who, like the subject of the last sketch, 
have lived without piety, and who, when sur- 
rounded with the dreary ruins of earthly hap- 
piness and hopes, and the images of past moni- 
tory events, convictions, neglects, broken re- 
solutions, and withered aspirations after spirit- 
ual good, have, with him, lamented their past 
devotion to mere worldly pursuits, but who 
perhaps less fortunate have not been sustained 
in death "by the faith and hopes of the gos- 
pel.'' What shall we do with such? Infidel- 
ity does not claim them — will have nothing to 
do with them ; and their names seem scarcely 
to come in for a place in Christian Biography. 
Neither infidel nor Christian, what shall we 
do with them? We will make a short digres- 
sion for the purpose of alluding to a few such. 
They may furnish an admonition to some 
Christian youth, not to put off till sickness or 
old age the day of repentance. 



42 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



ARHAND DU PLESIS DE RICHELIEU 

Was of noble parentage. Besides the dignity 
of cardinal, conferred on him by Glregory XV., 
he was created duke and peer of France, and 
enjoyed all the partiality of the king and the 
adulation of the nation could bestow on him. 
He was a great man and a celebrated states- 
man, but had few of the virtues of a good 
man. Hear his confessions at the end of his 
earthly career: — 

*^ I have been urged into many irregulari- 
ties by what is called the reason of state ; and 
as I could not tell how to satisfy my conscience 
for these deviations from rectitude, I endea- 
voured to persuade myself that there was no 
God, nor a future state, that I might quiet the 
upbraidings of my mind ; but my endeavours 
were vain. So strong was the idea of God in 
my soul ; so clear the impression of him upon 
the frame of the world ; so unanimous the 
consent of mankind ; and so powerful the con- 
victions of my own conscience, that I could not 
avoid feeling the necessity of admitting a 
Supreme Being and a future state ; and I 
wished to live as one that must die, and to die 
as one that must live forever.'^ 

But his sun went down amidst clouds and 



SIR THOMAS SMITH. 43 

darkness ; and who shall attempt to penetrate 
the gloom of the night that succeeded ? 



JULIUS MAZARIN 

Was likewise a cardinal, and succeeded Eiche- 
lieu as prime minister of France. He was one 
of the greatest statesmen of Europe, a man 
of great ambition, and pursued with ardour 
the chase of worldly honours. But a short 
time before his death he perceived the vanity 
of his pursuit, and lamented the misapplica- 
tion of his time and talents. He was greatly 
affected with the prospect of his dissolution, 
and the uncertainty of his future condition. 
This, we are told, made him cry out, " O, 
my poor soul! what will become of thee? 
Whither wilt thou go?^^ 

SIR THOMAS SMITH 

Was of the age of Queen Elizabeth, and exe- 
cuted the high office of secretary of state to 
the princess. He had received a liberal and 
polished education, and was king's Professor 
of Civil Law in the University at Cambridge. 
** This distinguished person,'' says a biogra- 
pher, " a short time before his decease, was 
much affected with the prospect of his dissolu- 



44 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

tion and of a future state. He sent to his 
friends, the bishops of Winchester and Wor- 
cester, and entreated them to state to him 
from the Holy Scriptures, the plainest and 
surest way of making his peace with God; 
adding, * It is lamentable, that men consider 
not for what end they are born into the world, 
till they are ready to go out of it.' '^ We 
leave his case where the memoir which w^e 
have consulted leaves it. 



HENRY BEAUFORT 

Was of royal extraction, being the son of John 
of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and brother of 
Henry IV., of England. He was successively 
chancellor of England, ambassador to France^ 
a cardinal in 1426, and legate in Germany. 
In his character he was proud, haughty, and 
ambitious ; and was commonly called the rich 
Cardinal of Winchester. In his last moments 
he thus vented his afflicted soul to his friends 
who surrounded him : " And must I then die? 
Will not all my riches save me? I could pur- 
chase the kingdom, if that would prolong my 
life. Alas ! there is no bribing death. When 
my nephew, the Duke of Bedford, died, I 
thought my happiness and my authority 
greatly increased ; but the Duke of Glouces- 



THOMAS WOLSEY. 45 

ter's death raised me in fancy to a level with 
kings, and I thought of nothing but accumu- 
lating still greater wealth, to enable me at 
length to purchase the triple crown. Alas ! 
how are my hopes disappointed ! Wherefore, 
O my friends, let me earnestly beseech you to 
pray for me, and recommend my departing soul 
to God/' 



CiESAR BORGIA 

Was a natural son of Pope Alexander VI., and 
was raised to the dignity of duke, by Louis 
XII., of France. At the close of a life of 
cruelty as well as of ambition, he made the 
following humiliating confession :— 

*^ I have provided, in the course of my life, 
for everything except death ; and now, alas ! 
I am to die, although entirely unprepared." 

THOMAS WOLSEY 

Was a celebrated favourite at the court of 
Henry VIII., of England. He rose to the 
elevated stations of lord high chancellor and 
prime minister, and was for several years the 
arbiter of Europe. A short time before he 
left the world, the review of his life, and a con- 
sciousness of the misapplication of liis time 
and talents, drew from him this sorrowful 



46 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

declaration: ^^Had I but served my God as 
diligently as I have served tlie king, he would 
not have given me over in my gray hairs. But 
this is the just reward that I must receive for 
my indulgent pains and study, not regarding 
my service to God, but only to my prince.'^ 

It is melancholy to reflect, how few of the 
politicians of our own country are pious men. 
How many of them will have to bequeath to 
the world only some such sad memorial as 
have these illustrious men. 



DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 

This may meet the eye of some young man 
just entering upon a course of pleasurable 
sin, and who will be induced to flee from that 
which he sees can end only in sorrow. The 
estate of Buckingham, says the Earl of Cla- 
rendon, was at one time the greatest in Eng- 
land; though he died in abject poverty. A 
few days before his death, while reviewing a 
life spent in pleasure and folly, and conse- 
quently in sin, he wrote the following letter 
to a particular friend — Dr. Barrow : — 

" Dear Doctor, — I always looked upon you 
to be a person of true virtue, and know you 
to have a sound understanding ; for however 



DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 47 

I have acted in opposition to the principles of 
religion, or the dictates of reason, I can 
honestly assure you, I have always had the 
highest veneration for both. The world and 
I shake hands — for I dare affirm we are 
heartily weary of each other. O, what a pro- 
digal have I been of that most valuable of all 
possessions — time ! I have squandered it away 
with a profusion unparalleled ; and now, when 
the enjoyment of a few days would be worth 
the world, I cannot flatter myself with the 
prospect of half a dozen hours. How despica- 
ble, my dear friend, is that man who never 
prays to his God but in the time of distress ! 
In what manner can he supplicate that omni- 
potent Being in his afflictions, whom in the 
time of his prosperity he never remembered 
with reverence ? Do not brand me with infi- 
delity, when I tell you that I am almost 
ashamed to offer up my petitions at the throne 
of grace, or to implore that divine mercy in 
the next world which I have scandalously 
abused in this. Shall ingratitude to man be 
looked upon as the blackest of crimes, and not 
ingratitude to God ? Shall an insult offered 
to the king be looked upon in the most offen- 
sive light, and yet no notice be taken when 
the King of kings is treated with indignity 
and disrespect ? 



48 CHKISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

" The companions of my former libertinism 
would scarcely believe their eyes were you to 
show them this epistle. They would laugh at 
me as a dreaming enthusiast, or pity me as a 
timorous wretch who was shocked at the ap- 
pearance of futurity ; but whoever laughs at 
me for being right, or pities me for being sen- 
sible of my errors, is more entitled to my com- 
passion than resentment. A future state may 
well enough strike terror into any man who 
has not acted well in this life ; and he must 
have an uncommon share of courage indeed, 
who does not shrink at the presence of God. 
The apprehensions of death will soon bring 
the most profligate to a proper use of his un- 
derstanding. To what a situation am I now 
reduced ! From my rank I might have ex- 
pected affluence to wait upon my life ; from 
religion and understanding, peace to smile 
upon my end : instead of which I am afflicted 
with poverty, haunted with remorse, and, I 
fear, forsaken by my God ! 

" There is nothing so dangerous as extraor- 
dinary abilities. I cannot be accused of van- 
ity now, by being sensible that I was once 
possessed of uncommon qualifications, especi- 
ally as I sincerely regret that I ever had 
them. My rank in life made these accom- 
plishments still more conspicuous ; and, fasci- 



DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 4^ 

nated by the general applause which they 
procured, I never considered the proper means 
by which they should be displayed. Hence, 
to procure a smile from a blockhead whom I 
despised, I have frequently treated the vir- 
tuous with disrespect ; and sported with the 
holy name of Heaven, to obtain a laugh from 
a parcel of fools, who were entitled to nothing 
but contempt. Your men of wit generally 
look upon themselves as discharged from the 
duties of religion, and confine the doctrines 
of the gospel to people of meaner understand- 
ings. It is a sort of derogation, in their 
opinion, to comply with the rules of Christi- 
anity ; and they reckon that man possessed 
of a narrow genius who studies to be good. 
What a pity that the Holy Writings are not 
made the criterion of true judgment ! or that 
any person should pass for a gentleman in 
this world, but he that appears solicitous 
about his happiness in the next ! 

** Favour me with a visit as soon as possi- 
ble. Writing to you gives me some ease, 
especially on a subject I could talk of forever. 
1 am of opinion this is the last visit I shall 
ever solicit from you : my distemper is power- 
ful. Come and pray for the departing spirit 
of the poor, unhappy Buc^kingham/' 

4 



50 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



GEORGE CUYIER. 

George Cuvier was born on the 23d of Au- 
gust, 1769, at Montbeliard, then a part of the 
kingdom of Wurtemburg, but now belonging 
to France. The mind of Cuvier early devel- 
oped its peculiar tendencies and its wonder- 
ftil powers. So various were his attainments, 
and so comprehensive his researches, that I 
shall not attempt to enter into them specifi- 
cally. As a legislator, as an orator, as an 
anatomist, and especially as a natural histo- 
rian and as an author, was he greatly distin- 
guished. In his memoirs, written by Mrs. 
Lee, the bare list of his published works, fills 
eight 12mo. pages. In 1819, he was created 
baronet, and in 1832, the year of his death, 
was raised to the peerage of France. 

Cuvier was claimed as their countryman, 
both by the French and the Germans ; and at 
the time of his death was perhaps the man 
whom the scientific world delighted most to 
honour. The principal reason for introducing 
this sketch of Cuvier, is to show the fallacy 
of the claim which infidelity has brought in, 
to have his name enrolled among her vota- 
ries. Baron Cuvier was a Christian. This is 
fully sustained by the following quotations 



GEORGE CUVIER. 51 

from the Foreign Quarterly Review^ for Octo- 
ber, 1838:— 

'^ As the minister of public instruction, he 
endeavoured above all, by his own private in- 
junctions as well as his public regulations, 
to make the love of God, and the divine pre- 
cepts of the gospel, the basis of all instruc- 
tion.'' 

** To establish the fact, that M. Cuvier was 
a really religious man, we conceive would not 
be difficult ; but as to what particular section 
of Protestantism he belonged to, there are no 
grounds for assertion or conclusion, for though 
fervent in private prayer, he was never heard 
to make a public profession of faith. There 
were, however, qualities in M. Cuvier of so 
superior a nature, that they at once stamp 
him as highly religious. He promoted the 
cause of true religion by every means in his 
power, both public and private ; he was a 
warm supporter of the Bible Society, and 
caused the Old and New Testament to be 
widely disseminated in every part of Protes- 
tant France. In his letters to the heads of 
colleges, and masters of schools, he strongly 
recommended them to teach for the love of 
God, himself pointing out their duties accord- 
ing to that great rule. He constantly ad- 
hered to th(^ Protestmit fnith, when it wos well 



52 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

known that a change to the Eoman Catholic 
form of worship would have been the surest 
step to the attainment of the highest honours 
of the State ; he caused a number of chapels 
to be established in order to give facility for 
attending divine worship ; he in all his works 
refers the wonders of creation to the one true 
source. He never would receive any salary 
for administering to the interests of the Pro- 
testant religion — but faithfully discharged all 
the duties of this office, with a zeal which 
showed that he had a much higher motive 
than that of gain or reputation. 

" When the hour of death came, he 

met it with the firmest composure ; he traced 
the progress of his disorder, foretold its phases 
with calmness, bore his sufferings without a 
complaint, secured the welfare of others, and 
gave his final directions on every subject, with 
the cool courage of a great and religious 
mind, and an unstained conscience.'^ 

Should these extracts leave a doubt on the 
mind of any one, whether Cuvier w^as a Chris- 
tian or an infidel, permit me to inquire. Where 
in the history of the world has ever been 
found another infidel such as he is here repre- 
sented to have been ? 



GEORUE LYTTLETON. 58 



GEORGE LYTTLETON. 



George Lyttleton was born in Worcester- 
shire, England, in 1709 ; and was educated at 
Eaton and Christ's Church, Oxford, where he 
distinguished himself as a polite scholar and 
a good poet. In 1728, on leaving the univer- 
sity, he travelled extensively on the conti- 
nent ; and on his return home obtained a seat 
in parliament. He successively filled the of- 
fices of secretary to the Prince of Wales, lord 
of the exchequer, privy counsellor, and chan- 
cellor of the exchequer ; and in 1757 was 
raised to the peerage. The remainder of his 
life his lordship passed in honourable retire- 
ment from the political turbulence of his times. 
He was a distinguished statesman, and an in- 
timate friend of the elder Pitt. 

Lord Lyttleton was an able writer. Among 
other literary productions of his, is an elabo- 
rate history of Henry II. 

The testimonials in favour of his religious 
character are unanimous and unequivocal. 
David Simpson, author of the Plea for Reli- 
gion, speaks of him thus : — " The late Lord 
Lyttleton, and his friend Gilbert West, Esq., 
had botli imbibed the principles of unbelief, 
and had agreed together to write something 



54 CHRISTIAN BIOUKAPHY. 

in favour of infidelity. To do this more effec- 
tually, they judged it necessary first to ac- 
quaint themselves pretty well with the con- 
tents of the Bible. By the perusal of that 
book, however, they were both convicted of 
their error ; both were converts to the reli- 
gion of Christ Jesus ; both took up their pens 
and wrote in favour of it — the former, his 
Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul; the 
latter, his Observations on the Resurrection of 
Christ — and both died in peace." 

A biographer says: "Lyttleton in the former 
part of his life had been a sceptic, but his ma- 
ture age viewed with concern the levities and 
dangerous tenets of dissolute companions, and 
after a studious application, he produced, in 
1747, ' Observations on the Conversion and Apos- 
tleship of St Paul,^ a valuable book, which 
infidelity will never be able to answer. His 
lordship died August 22d, 1773, aged 64. On 
his death-bed he displayed all the calmness 
and resignation of a great mind. He again 
reminded his physician. Dr. Johnson, that he 
died a sincere Christian, and with composure 
giving his blessings to those around him, he 
told Lord Valentia, who with his lady was at 
his bed-side, with a voice of solemn affection, 
' Be good, be virtuous, my lord, — you must 
come to this.^ '^ 



GEORGE LYTTLETON. 56 

Dr. Johnson himself says : " Lord Lyttle- 
ton, in the pride of juvenile confidence, with 
the help of corrupt conversation, entertained 
doubts of the truth of Christianity ; but he 
thought afterwards, it was no longer fit to 
doubt, or believe by chance, and therefore ap- 
plied himself seriously to the great question. 
His studies being honest, ended in conviction. 
He found that religion was true ; and what 
he had learned he endeavoured to teach, by 
Observations on the Conversion of St Paul, — a 
treatise to which infidelity has never been 
able to fabricate a specious answer.'^ 

We also have his own account of his con- 
version. Two days before his death, he ad- 
dressed his physician thus : — " When I first 
set out in the world, I had friends who endea- 
voured to shake my belief in the Christian 
religion. I saw difficulties which staggered 
me, but I kept my mind open to conviction. 
The evidences and doctrines of Christianity, 
studied with attention, made me a most firm 
and persuaded believer of the Christian reli- 
gion. I have made it the rule of mj^ life, and 
— it is the ground of my future hopes.^' 

Should this sketch meet the eye of any 
sceptical reader, let me say, — Go and do as 
did this great man ; and may your last end 
be like his. 



4~ 



56 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



GILBERT WEST. 



Gilbert West was referred to in my last 
sketch as an intimate friend of Lord Lyttle- 
ton. He too was educated at Eaton and Christ 
Church, Oxford. He held some civil offices 
under the government, hut appears never to 
have courted puhlic life. After his marriage 
he settled at Wickham, Kent, where we are 
told " his retirement was frequently visited 
by Lyttleton and Pitt, who, weary with fac- 
tion and political debates, courted his society 
and the tranquillity of his abode.'^ He was 
in several ways honourably noticed by Pitt. 
His association with these men sufficiently 
establishes his general character. 

To the classical scholar, he is favourably 
known by his translation of Pindar^s Odes 
into English — a valuable, elegant, and spirited 
composition. 

His biography says, that in his retirement 
at Wickham, " he devoted himself to literary 
and religious pursuits.'' His Observations on 
the Resurrection of Christ, written after his 
conversion from infidelity, was deemed a work 
of great merit, and obtained for him, from 
the University of Oxford, the honourable de- 
gree of LL.D. 



ROGER SHERMAN. 67 

Dr. West, writing to Dr. Doddridge on the 
publication of his Memoirs of Colonel Gardi- 
ner, ascribes his own conversion from a state 
of infidelity, into which he had been seduced, 
to the care his mother had taken in his edu- 
cation. '' I cannot help taking notice,^' says 
he, " of your remarks upon the advantage of 
an early education in the principles of reli- 
gion, because I have myself most happily ex- 
perienced it, since I owe to the early care of a 
most excellent woman, my mother, that bent 
and bias to religion, which, with the co-ope- 
rating grace of God, hath at length brought 
me back to those paths of peace from whence 
I might have otherwise been in danger of de- 
viating forever. ^^ 

How valuable this testimony of such a man ! 
and how fortunate, could his example be the 
means of bringing back to " the paths of 
peace,^^ some other young man, who may have 
hitherto disregarded the pious instructions of 
a sainted mother ! 



ROGER SHERMAN". 

Roger Sherman was born in Newton, Mass., 
April 19, 1721 ; and though he received no 
other education than the ordinary schools at 
that time afforded, yet by his ardent thirst for 



58 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

knowledge, he acquired a very considerable 
acquaintance with the various branches of 
general science, became thoroughly versed in 
law and politics, and attained to some of the 
highest honours of our country. 

He was early apprenticed to a shoemaker, 
and followed this trade till he was twenty-two 
years of age, when he commenced business as 
a country merchant in New Milford, Conn. 
By a circumstance which may be deemed pro- 
vidential, he was led to the study of the law, 
and in 1754 was admitted to the bar. In 
1759 he was appointed a judge of the county 
court, and in 1766 advanced to a seat on the 
bench of the superior court, and was also 
chosen a member of the council. He was 
elected a member of congress in 1774, and 
continued to hold a seat in that body, except 
when excluded by the law requiring a rota- 
tion. In 1776, he was appointed in conjunc- 
tion with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, 
Benjamin Franklin, and Eobert E. Livings- 
ton, to draw up the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, and was one of the signers of that in- 
strument. He was also a conspicuous member 
in the convention which formed the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. In 1791 he was 
chosen a senator in congress, and retained the 
station till the time of his death. 



KOUER SHERMAN. 59 

Of Mr. Sherman, John Adams says, he was 
*^ one of the soundest and strongest pillars of 
the Eevolution.'' Mr. Jefferson, pointing to 
Mr. Sherman, once said, " That is Mr. Sher- 
man, of Connecticut, a man who never said a 
foolish thing in his life.^^ Such was Eoger 
Sherman ; and such he was, in consequence of 
his early and steady adherence to the princi- 
ples of Christianity. Before he was twenty- 
one years of age he made a public profession 
of religion. 

** The most interesting lesson which the life 
of Mr. Sherman teaches,^' says one of his bio- 
graphers, " is the paramount importance of re- 
ligious principle. His undeviating political 
integrity was not the result of mere patriotism 
or philanthropy. He revolved in a higher 
orbit. The volume which he consulted more 
than any other was the Bible. It was his cus- 
tom to purchase a copy of the Scriptures at 
the commencement of every session of con- 
gress, to peruse it daily, and to present it to 
one of his children on his return. To his 
familiar acquaintance with this blessed book, 
much of that extraordinary sagacity which he 
uniformly exhibited, is to be attributed. The 
second President Edwards used to call him 
his * great and good friend, Senator Sher- 
man f and acknowledged, that, in the general 



.60 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

course of a long and intimate acquaintance, 
he was materially assisted by his observa- 
tions on the principal subjects of doctrinal and 
practical divinity.'^ 

" He was not ashamed/^ says D. Edwards, 
" to befriend religion, to appear openly on the 
Lord^s side, or to avow and defend the peculiar 
doctrines of grace. He was exemplary in at- 
tending all the institutions of the gospel, in 
the practice of virtue in general, and in show- 
ing himself friendly to all good men. With 
all his elevation and with all his honours, he 
was not at all lifted up, but appeared perfectly 
unmoved. ^^ 

On the 23d of July, 1793, this great and ex- 
cellent man died, aged seventy-two — died in 
the full possession of all his powers both of 
mind and body — died as the Christian would 
wish to die. 

" What an example,^^ says the Eev. B. B. 
Edwards, " is here presented for the youthful 
lawyer and statesman ! Would he rise to the 
most distinguished usefulness, would he be- 
queath a character and an influence to pos- 
terity ^ above all Greek or Eoman fame,^ let 
him, like Koger Sherman, lay the foundations 
in the fear of God, and in obedience to the 
gospel of Jesus Christ. ^^ 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 61 



CHAPTER 11. 

SAMUEL ADAMS ROBERT TREAT PAINE MATTHEW THORNTON 

SAMUEL HUNTINGDON WILLIAM WILLIAMS — PHILIP LIV- 
INGSTON RICHARD STOCKTON JOHN WITHERSPOON — JOHN 

HART — BENJAMIN RUSH ^JOHN MORTON — ^JAMES SMITH 

SAMUEL CHASE — THOMAS STONE FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN — HUMPHREY DAVY — WILLIAM JONES 

^JOHN SELDEN — JAMES GARDINER GEORGE WASHINGTON 

TIMOTHY PICKERING ISAAC SHELBY BENJAMIN LINCOLN 

— JOHN BROOKS ELIEZER BROOKS MATTHEW CLARKSON. 

SAMT?EL ADAMS, LL. D., 

With his friend John Hancock, by the last act 
of British rule in Massachusetts, was pro- 
scribed, while pardon was announced to all 
others who had shared in the resistance to the 
measures of the British ministry. This gives 
him an enviable distinction among the patriots 
of that day. On the adoption of a constitution 
by Massachusetts, he was elected president of 
the senate ; and subsequently, for mau}^ suc- 
cessive years, filled the ofiices of lieutenant- 
governor, and of chief magistrate in the State. 
A biographer says, '' Mr. Adams was a Chris- 
tian, as well as a man of science. He early 
approached the table of the Lord Jesus, 
and the purity of his life witnessed the sin- 
cerity of his profession. On the Christian 



62 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

Sabbath he constantly went to the temple ; and 
the morning and evening devotions in his 
family proved, that his religion attended him 
in his seasons of retirement from the world. 
The last production of his pen was in favour 
of Christian truth. He died in the faith of 
the gospel.^' 



ROBERT TREAT PAINE, LL.D, 

Was also one of the Massachusetts delegation, 
and after the adoption of the^ State constitu- 
tion, held successively, for many years, the 
offices of attorney-general of the State, and of 
judge of the supreme court. 

A biographer says, " Judge Paine was a 
firm believer in the divine origin of the Chris- 
tian religion. He gave full credence to the 
Scriptures, as a revelation from God, designed 
to instruct mankind in a knowledge of their 
duty, and to guide them in the way to eternal 
happiness.^^ 



MATTHEW THORNTON, 

Of the New-Hampshire delegation, subse- 
quently held the offices of chief justice of the 
county of Hillsborough, and of judge of the 
supreme court of the State. 



SAMUEL HUNTINGDON. 63 

Eev. Dr. Burnap says, in his funeral sermon, 
" He was exemplary for his regard for the 
public institutions of religion, and for his con- 
stancy in attending the public worship, where 
he trod the courts of the house of God with 
steps tottering with age and infirmity.^' 



SAMUEL HUNTINGDON, 

Of the Connecticut delegation, subsequently 
held the offices of lieutenant governor, chief 
judge, and governor of the State. 

A biographer says, " The death of this ex- 
cellent and distinguished man occurred on the 
CAh of January, 1796, in the sixty-fourth year 
of his age. His departure from the world, as 
might be expected from the even tenor of his 
life, and from the decided Christian character 
and conversation which he had manifested, 
was tranquil. He had for many years been a 
professor of religion, and a devoted attendant 
upon the ordinances of the gospel. His seat 
in the house of God was seldom vacant ; and 
when occasion required, he was ready to lead 
in an address to the throne of grace ; and was 
able to impart instruction to the people, drawn 
from the pure oracles of God.'' 



64 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



WILLIAM WILLIAMS 

Was one of the Connecticut delegation. He 
filled several honourable offices in his State, 
and was also for several years a member of 
congress. On declining a re-election to con- 
gress, in an address to the people he admon- 
ished them to appoint for his successor, " one 
who feared God, is a friend of the constitution 
and to the administration of the venerable 
Washington.'^ 

A biographer says, " Mr. Williams made a 
profession of religion at an early age, and 
through the course of his life he was distin- 
guished for an humble and consistent conduct 
and conversation. His latter days were 
chiefly devoted to reading, meditation, and 
prayer. At length the hour arrived when 
God would take him to himself. He gave up 
the ghost in a good old age, and was gathered 
to his fathers.'^ 



PHILIP LIVINGSTON 

Was a member of the New- York delegation, 
and was subsequently distinguished, both in his 
own State and in congress, a session of which 
he was attendino; at the time of liis deatli. 



JOHN WlTllER^<r00X. GO 

A biographer thus speaks of him : " He was 
a firm believer in tlie great trutlis of tlic 
Cliristian system, and a sincere and hunibh* 
follower of the Divine Eedeemer." 



RICHARD STOCKTON 

Was a member of the NeAV-Jersey delegation ; 
and held the office of judge, both under tlie 
provisional government and after the adoption 
of the constitution in 1770. He was an ac- 
complished scholar as well as statesman. 

The Eev. Dr. Samuel S. Smith, in a dis- 
course delivered on the occasion of his inter- 
ment, says, ^' As a Christian, you know that, 
many years a member of this Church, he was 
not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Nor 
could the ridicule of licentious wits, nor the 
example of vice in power, tempt him to dis- 
guise the profession of it, or to decline from 
the practice of its virtues.'^ 

JOHN WITHERSPOON, D.D., LL.i).. 

A man of distinguished piety, learning, and 
talents, was one of the signers of the Declara- 
tion of Independence. 



66 ciirasTiAN biography. 



JOim HART. 



Also one of tlie New- Jersey delegation, and 
who retained his seat in congress till his death 
in 1779, ''enjoyed the repntation of being a 
sincere and hnmble Christian/^ He was a 
member of the Baptist Chnrch in Hopewell, 
Hunterdon county, N. J. 



BENJAMIN RUSR M.D., LL.D., 

Was a member of the Pennsylvania delega- 
tion, and was, in the best sense of the term, a 
great man. His father having died when he 
was but six years of age, the care of his educa- 
tion devolved upon his motliei*. Under the 
care of judicious teachers, he was early trained 
for both worlds. His biographer says, " Such 
was the force of pious example and religious 
education in the first fifteen years of his life, 
that though he spent the ensuing nine in 
Philadelphia, Edinburgh, London, and Paris, 
exposed to the manifold temptations which are 
inseparable from great cities, yet he returned, 
at the age of twenty-four, to his native country, 
with unsullied purity of morals. The sneers 
of infidels, and the fascinations of pleasure, 
had no power to divert him from the correct 



JAMES SMITH. 67 

principles and virtuous habits wliicli had been 
ingrafted on his mind in early youth.'' 

It is added : " Piety to God was an eminent 
trait in the character of Dr. Eush. In all his 
printed works and in all his private transac- 
tions, he professed the most profound respect 
and veneration for the Eternal.'' And Dr. 
Allen, after citing many instances of distin- 
guished piety in the medical profession, re- 
marks : '^ Need I speak of the illustrious Rush, 
who deemed riches and fame as incomparably 
less valuable than the religious principles 
which he received from his parents ; and who 
was accustomed at the close of every day to 
read in his family a chapter of the Bible, and 
then to address God in prayer ?" 

JOHN MOKTON, 

A delegate from the same State, and for 
some time a jndge of the supreme court, 
** was a professor of religion and truly an ex- 
cellent man." 



JAMES SMITH, 

Also from Pennsylvania, '' was for many years 
a professor of religion, and very regular in 
his attendance on public worship." 



68 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



SAMUEL CHASE 



Was a member of the Maryland delegation, 
and was subsequently appointed by Wasliing- 
ton an associate judge of the supreme court of 
the United States, a station which he con- 
tinued to occupy for fifteen years. ** He was 
a firm believer in Christianity ; and but a 
short time before his death having partaken 
of the sacrament, he declared himself to be in 
peace Avith all mankind.^^ 

THOMAS STONE 

Was also from Maryland, and shared largely 
in the honours of his State. " He was a pro- 
fessor of religion, and distinguished for a sin- 
cere and fervent piety.^^ 

FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE 

Was chosen a delegate from Virginia in 
1775, and, both before and after that period, 
received numerous tokens of confidence from 
his native State. A short sketch of his public 
life, now before me, says : ^^ It is said that he 
had embraced the religion of the gospel, 
and that under its supporting hope and con- 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 69 

solatioii, he made his exit in peace from the 
world/' 

Let these examples suffice. Such, it is be- 
lieved, were many of those immortal men 
whose names shall never die. To the true 
sons of liberty it cannot but be interesting to 
know, that those whose names they so much 
revere, and who were so highly honoured of 
men, were honoured also of God ; that they 
have gone to a reward which mere patriotism 
can never buy. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

It is with feelings of sadness that the writer 
ever reverts to the memory of any one who 
has ever given evidence of being a believer in 
Christianity, who has given to tlie Christian 
system the assent of a powerful mind, yet who 
has left the world without leaving behind him 
evideiice that himself has been a partaker of 
its full excellence. Such have fully adopted 
Christianity, as a system of belief, though they 
may not have adopted it as a system of re- 
ligious faith. 

It is not to produce in the minds of my 
readers such a feeling of sadness as this that 1 
thus write; but it is to do an act of justice, to 
distinguished intellectual excellence, in wrest- 



70 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

ing from the grasp of infidels, two from among 
the brilliant names which adorn the annals of 
modern science. Who would wish to leave 
the world in any possible doubt whether he 
were a Christian or an infidel ? But if so un- 
fortunate as this, who would not wish his name 
rescued from so foul a disgrace as an associa- 
tion with infidelity implies ? 

Benjamin Franklin acknowledged himself, 
in the early part of his life, to have been 
sceptical in religion ; but we have the testi- 
mony of his intimate friend. Dr. William 
Smith, that " in his maturer years he became 
a believer in divine revelation. ^^ Extracts 
from his own writings go far to show his re- 
spect for religion and sacred things. In one 
of his letters, referring to our national pros- 
perity, he says: ''Had it not been for the 
justice of our cause, and the consequent in- 
terposition of Providence, in which we had 
faith, we must have been ruined. If I had 
ever before been an atheist I should now have 
been convinced of the being and government 
of a Deity. It is he that abases the proud 
and elevates the humble ; may we never for- 
get his goodness, and may our future conduct 
manifest our gratitude.'' 

The following is found in his memoirs, writ- 
ten bv himself : "And here let me with all 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 7| 

liumility acknowledge, that to Divine Provi- 
dence I am indebted for the felicity I have 
hitherto enjoyed. It is that power alone 
v/hich has furnished me with the means I 
have employed, and that has crowned them 
with success. My future fortune is unknown 
but to Him, in whose hand is our destiny, and 
who can make our very afflictions subservient 
to our benefit.^^ 

The following letter of Dr. Franklin, found 
in his works, edited by his grandson, William 
Temple Franklin, (London edition, vol. iii., p. 
279,) addressed to the author of an infidel 
publication, submitted to him in manuscript, 
(probably Paine,) also presents special claims 
to our attention : — 

'* Dear Sir, — I have read your manuscript 
with some attention. By the argument which 
it contains against a particular providence, 
though you allow a general providence, you 
strike at tlie foundation of all religion. For 
Avithout the belief of a providence, that takes 
cognizance of, guards and guides, and may 
favour particular persons, there is no motive 
to worship a Deity, to fear its displeasure, or 
to pray for its protection. I will not enter 
into any discussion of your principles, though 
you seem to desire it. At present I shall only 



72 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

give you my opinion, that tliongh your reason- 
ing is .subtle, and may prevail with some 
readers, you Avill not succeed so as to change 
the general sentiments of mankind on that sub- 
ject, and the consequences of printing this 
piece will be a great deal of odium drawn 
upon yourself, mischief to you, and no benefit 
to others. He that spits against the wind 
spits in his own face. But were you to suc- 
ceed, do you imagine any good will be done 
by it ? You may find it easy to live a virtuous 
life without the aid of religion, you having a 
clear perception of the advantages of virtue 
and disadvantages of vice, and possessing a 
strength of resolution sufficient to enable you 
to resist common temptations. But think how 
great a portion of mankind consists of igno- 
rant men and women, and of inexperienced, 
inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who Jiave 
need of the motives of religion to restrain 
them from vice, support their virtue, and re- 
tain them in the practice of it till it becomes 
habitual, which is the great point of security. 
And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, 
that is, to your religious education, for the 
habits of virtue upon Avhich you now justly 
value yourself. You might easily display your 
talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous 
subject, and thereby obtain a rank with our 



HUMPHRF.Y DAVY. 73 

most distinguished autliors. For among us 
it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, 
tliat a youth, to he raised into the company 
of men, sliould prove his manhood by heating 
]iis mother. I would advise you, therefore, 
not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to 
burn this piece before it is seen by any other 
person, whereby you will save yourself a great 
deal of mortification from the enemies it may 
raise against you, and perhaps a gx3od deal of 
regret and repentance. 

" If men are so wicked with religion, wliat 
Avould they be without it? I intend this let- 
ter itself as a proof of my friendship, and 
therefore add no professions to it, but sub- 
scribe simply/^ 



HUMPHREY DAVY. 

Of Sir H. Davy's religious opinions and feel- 
ings the writer of these sketches knows but 
little. He is supposed, however, not to have 
been practically pious. The following striking 
sentence is found among his writing's : — " I 
envy no quality of the mind or intellect in 
others ; not genius, power, wit, or fancy ; but 
if I could choose what would be most deliglit- 
ful, and I believe most useful to me, I should 



74 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

prefer a firm religious belief, to every other 
blessing; — for it makes life a discipline of 
goodness — creates new hopes when all earthly 
hopes vanish, and throws over the decay, the 
destruction of existence, the most gorgeous 
of all lights ; awakens life even in death, and 
from corruption and decay calls up beauty 
and divdnity ; makes an instrument of torture 
and of shame the ladder of ascent to paradise ; 
and, far above all combinations of earthly 
hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of 
palms and amaranths, the gardens of the 
blessed, the security of everlasting joys, where 
the sensualist and the sceptic view only gloom, 
decay, and annihilation/^ His last work, 
" Consolaticms in Travel,^ ^ still more fully de- 
velops the religious tendency of his mind. 

Surely the names of these men cannot with 
any propriety be added to the lists of infidel- 
ity, though frequently there found. How 
many such there are among us at present, 
who would start at the idea of having their 
names, after they are dead, set down among 
the advocates of an impious and destructive 
infidelity, or even of an immoral scepticism I 
Though we may admit they were practical 
neglecters of this great salvation, they neither 
of them appear to have been established in un- 
belief. The one, once sceptical, afterwards 



WILLIAM JONES. 75 

became a believer ; tlie other appears never 
to have withdrawn time enough from his 
other pursuits, to examine the subject fully. 
An infidel, however, he was not. 



WILLIAM JONES. 

William Jones was born in London, in 1748. 
His father dying in his infancy, his early 
character was developed under the care of his 
mother, a woman of high character for sensi- 
bility and understanding. At the age of six- 
teen, he entered University College, Oxford, 
and at twenty-two commenced the study of law. 

At the age of twenty-six, were published 
his commentaries on Asiatic poetry ; and from 
that period his published works show him 
deeply learned, not only in the literature of 
the East, but in legal knowledge. In con- 
sideration of his attainments in these depart- 
ments of learning, in 1793 he was appointed 
to preside in the Supreme Court of Calcutta ; 
and on that occasion he received the honour 
of knighthood. _^ 

Sir William Jones died at the age of forty- 
eight, but not till he had made great attain- 
ments in science and in polite learning. He 
was eminent as a judge, and for his profound 
knowledge of the laws of England ; he was 



76 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

distinguished for his attainments in astro- 
nomy, chronology, antiquities, music, and 
botany ; he was a good poet, an able critic, 
and an indefatigable historian ; and in his 
knowledge of the languages has probably been 
surpassed by few if any. The writer of these 
sketches thinks of none who can be set in 
competition with him for a comprehensive 
knowledge of the languages, unless it be Alex- 
ander Murray. 

A biographer says : " Before this illustrious 
scholar went to India, he was by no means 
free from a sceptical bias. But when he re- 
sided in Asia, he investigated with rigid and 
minute attention, all those intricate theologi- 
cal points which had occasioned his doubts ; 
and the result was, not only his own most 
complete conviction, but the conviction of se- 
veral eminent scholars, who, till then, had but 
slightly attended to the proofs of the verity 
of the Mosaic writings. These gentlemen, 
from that time, renounced their doubts and 
errors, and became, like Sir William himself, 
not only almost, but altogether Christians.'^ 

In the third volume of his " Asiatic Jte- 
searches/^ he gives us this valuable testimony 
in regard to the Scriptures : — " Theological in- 
quiries are no part of my present subject ; but 
I cannot refrain from adding, that the collect 



WILLIAM JONES. 77 

tion of tracts, wliich we call from their excel- 
lence the Scriptures, contain, independently of 
a divine origin, more true sublimity, more ex- 
quisite beauty, pure morality, more important 
history, and finer strains both of poetry and 
eloquence than could be collected within the 
same compass from all other books that were 
ever composed in any age or in any idiom. 
The two parts of which the Scriptures consist, 
are connected by a chain of compositions, 
which bear no resemblance in form or style to 
any that can be produced from the stores of 
Grecian, Indian, Persian, or even Arabian 
learning. The antiquity of those compositions 
no man doubts ; and the unstrained applica- 
tion of them to events long subsequent to 
their publication is a solid ground of belief, 
that they Avere genuine predictions, and con- 
sequently inspired.^^ 

The last hour of the life of this illustrious 
character was marked by a solemn act of de- 
votion. ''Finding his dissolution rapidly aj)- 
proacliing, he desired liis attendants to carry 
him into an inner apartment, where, at his 
desire, they left him. Eeturning after a short 
interval, they ibund him in a kneeling pos- 
ture, with his liands clasjied, and liis eyes 
fixed towards lioaven. As they were remov- 
ing him lie expired.'^ 



78 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



JOHN SELDEK 

John Selden, a native of Sussex, England, 
was born in 1584. He is one of those men 
whose memory the learned and the great have 
delighted to honour. A short notice in a Bio- 
graphical Dictionary says of him : — " As a 
scholar Selden ranks very high. He was not 
only skilled in the Hebrew and oriental lan- 
guages, but he was acquainted with all laws, 
divine and human, and in the stores of a most 
retentive memory he had treasured up what- 
ever is valuable, interesting, and important, 
in ancient and modern literature.^^ White- 
lock says of him : — " His mind was as great 
as his learning, and he w^as as hospitable and 
as generous as any man.'' Clarendon has ob- 
served: ^^ He was a person whom no character 
can flatter, or transmit in any expressions 
equal to his merit and virtue.'' And the great 
Grotius has styled him *' The glory of the 
English nation." 

This celebrated man was an intimate friend 
of Sir Matthew Hale, who often stated to 
Baxter, that Selden was a '' resolved, serious 
Christian." 

In a conference with Archbishop Usher, 
wlien he was near tlie end of his days, after 



.JAMEvS GAKDINEK. 79 

having taken a survey of all kinds of learn- 
ing*, and having read as much perhaps as any 
man ever did, Selden declared, that '' though 
he had been very laborious in his literary in- 
quiries, and had possessed himself of a great 
number of valuable books and manuscripts 
upon all ancient subjects, yet he could rest 
the happiness of his soul on none of them, ex- 
cept the Holy Scriptures.'^ Well has Simp- 
son said, " This is a perfect eulogium on the 
sacred volume/' 



JAMES GARDINER. 

James Gardiner was a native of Scotland, 
and born in the year 1G88. His mother, witli 
great tendqrness and solicitude for his future 
happiness, instructed him in the principles of 
Christianity ; but he early engaged in a mili- 
tary life, and for many years appears to have 
devoted himself to sensual pursuits. At the 
nge of thirty-one, liowever, lie experienced tlie 
converting grace of God, when he reformed 
the licentious conduct of his youth, and lived 
ever afterwards in habits of tlie most correct 
morals and of the most undisguised ])iety. 

Dr. Doddridge has written the life of this 
extraordinary man. How he passed that ])or- 
tion of liis life devoted to sensualil v and vi(.*r, 



80 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

may be inferred from the following quotation : 
" His firm constitution, tlian perhaps there 
hardly ever was a better, gave him great op- 
portunities of indulging in excess ; and his 
good spirits enabled him to pursue his plea- 
sures of every kind, in so alert and sprightly 
a manner, that multitudes envied him, and 
called him by a dreadful kind of compliment, 
The Happy Rake. Yet still the checks of 
conscience, and some remaining principles of 
so good an education as he had received, would 
break in u^pon his most licentious hours ; and 
I particularly remember he told me, that when 
some of his dissolute companions were congra- 
tulating him on his distinguished felicity, a 
dog happening at that time to come into the 
room, he could not forbear groaning inwardly, 
and saying to himself, that I were that dog ! 
Such was then his happiness ! and such per- 
haps is that of hundreds more, who bear them- 
selves highest in contempt of religion, and 
glory in that infamous servitude which they 
call liberty/^ 

Of the nature of Colonel Gardiner's piety, 
much may be inferred from the following 
quotation : " He used constantly to rise at 
four o'clock in the morning, and to spend his 
time till six in tlie secret exercises of devo- 
tion, reading, meditation, and prayer ; in 



JAMES GARDINER. 81 

wliicli last he contracted such a fervency of 
spirit, as I believe few men living ever at- 
tained. This certainly tended very much to 
strengthen that firm faitli in God, and reve- 
rent, animating sense of his presence, for 
which he was so eminently remarkable, and 
which carried him through the trials and 
vicissitudes of life, with such steadiness and 
with such activity ; for he endured and acted 
as always ' seeing Him who is invisible/ If at 
any time he was obliged to go out before six 
in the morning, he rose proportionably sooner ; 
so that when a journey or a march has re- 
quired him to be on horseback by four, he 
would be at his devotions at farthest by two. 
He likewise secured time for retirement in the 
evening." 

To the pious reader, the following extracts 
from his private correspondence, cannot fail to 
be interesting. In a letter to his wife, occurs 
the following : — " ! how ought we to long 
to be with Christ ; which is infinitely better 
than anything we can propose here ! to be 
there where all complaints shall be forever 
banished — where no mountains shall separate 
between God and our souls ! And I hope it 
will be some addition to our happiness, that 
you and I shall be separated no more ; but 
that, as we have joined in singing the praises 



82 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

of our glorious Eedeemer here, we shall sing 
them in a much higher strain through an end- 
less eternity/^ , 

On another occasion he writes thus : — 
** What would I have given this day, uj)on 
the road, for paper, pen, and ink, when the 
Spirit of the Most High rested upon me ! O I 
for the pen of a ready writer, and the tongue 
of an angel, to declare what God has done 
this day for my soul ! But in short it is in 
vain to attempt it ; all that I am able to say, 
is only this, that my soul has been for some 
hours joining with the blessed spirits above, 
in giving glory, and honour, and praise, unto 
Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the 
Lamb forever and ever/^* 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 

Of Washington as a warrior or a statesman 
nothing need be said. I shall refer to him 
only as a Christian ; and though we may find 
his piety of a somewhat-different stamp from 
that of the subject of my last sketch, yet it is 

■•• See tlie little work, entitled, " Some remarkable 
Passages in tlie Life of Colonel James Gardiner,^^ by Dr. 
Doddridge. This volume is specially commended to 
such as would see personal accomplishments, sound un- 
derstanding, and the multiplied engagements of a pub- 
lic life, combined with distinguished piety. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 83 

believed the conclusion will be equally irre- 
sistible, that he was really pious. I am not 
about to contend for the perfection of the 
Christian character in him, nor to hold him up 
as a perfect model of Christian piety. On tliis 
subject, however, it has been well said, " That 
few men have been placed in circumstances 
more unfriendly to the cultivation of Chris- 
tian virtues, — circumstances which, duly con- 
sidered, will render it more a matter of won- 
der that he should have been what he was, 
rather than that he should fail to be what he 
was not. Much of his life was spent amidst 
the confusion of camps and the contentions of 
cabinets. He Avas, early in life, thrown upon 
his own resources, and usually surrounded by 
persons having little regard for religion, and 
indeed hostile to it, as an intruder on their 
beloved pleasures and chosen occupations. 
And we are constrained to add, that the 
Church herself did not in every instance then 
impart that effectual aid to her members, 
which the most pious and established of them 
find necessary, in every age, to their spiritual 
comfort and edification. The day in which he 
lived was a dark one, religiously considered, 
and by no means distinguished for sucli pub- 
lic ministrations as prove most ])owerful to 
purify tlio lioart and reform tlie life. To 



84 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

these unfavourable accidents should be added 
the consideration of the closing years of his 
life being spent in the midst of a triumphant 
and reigning infidelity/^ Allusion is here 
made to the pretended offspring of philosophy 
and handmaid of liborty, which, originating 
in France, found many votaries among the 
great and learned of our own country. 

To these considerations should be added, 
that he was, during nearly his whole life, sur- 
rounded by such as had no interest in report- 
ing the evidences of his piety ; and that during 
his last short sickness, circumstances forbade 
the visitation of clergymen, while the physi- 
cians who attended him were irreligious. We 
have then but little to look to in evidence of 
his piety, but to his general character, and to 
some interesting circumstances which have 
been incidentally preserved. To some of these 
evidences I will briefly refer. 

1. It is admitted on all hands, that his 
whole life was but an exhibition of patriotism, 
disinterestedness, integrity, consistency, and 
truth, and of those high and excellent virtues, 
public, private, and social, which adorn even 
the Christian character. I unhesitatingly join 
with those who have concluded, that mere un- 
aided human nature never exhibited su(»li 
singular traits of goodness. 



GEORGE AVASHl^dTOX. 86 

2. It is well known, that as a commandor 
ho discouraged, by every means in his power, 
both among the soldiers and his fellow-ofBcers, 
every species of immorality, such as profane 
swearing, gambling, and drunkenness, and 
that he entertained to the practice of duelling 
the most settled hostility. 

3. There is abundant evidence furnished in 
liis letters and other writings, that his re- 
ligious creed was in accordance with that of 
the evangelical Churches of our country and 
of the world. In a letter to the State gover- 
nors he speaks of '^ the pure and benign light 
of revelation," and refers them to " that hu- 
mility and pacific temper of mind which were 
the characteristics of the Divine AutJior of our 
blessed religion^ and Avithout an humble imita- 
tion of whose example in these things, we can 
never hope to be a happy nation." 

4. During his whole life, public and private, 
he was a scrupulous observer of the Sabbath, 
and an attendant on all the usual public means 
of grace. When at Mount Vernon, though 
nine miles from a place of w^orship, even in his 
old age he was seldom absent. AVhile Presi- 
dent of the United States, his attendance at 
church was uniform, and he would not receive 
company on the Sabbath. During his mili- 
tary life, and even when in command of the 



86 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

American army, lie ahvays observed the Sab- 
batlij and as far as possible had religious 
services performed in camp; and when that 
conld not be, himself nsually rode out to some 
neighbouring church. Changes of time, place, 
and fortune, seem to leave him the same. In 
the French and Indian war, we find him 
*' performing divine service with his regiment, 
reading the Scriptures, and praying with 
them when no chaplain could be had,'^ and 
even " reading the funeral service over the re- 
mains of General Braddock, by the light of a 
torch,'^ and on the day succeeding the sur- 
render of Lord Cornwallis, issuing a general 
order that " divine service be performed to- 
morrow in the different brigades and divi- 
sions,^^ and recommending its appropriate ob- 
servance by considerations drawn from re- 
ligion. 

5. There is satisfactory evidence that he 
was accustomed to partake of the Lord's sup- 
per, both at the church where he usually at- 
tended and at other places where he chanced 
to attend worship, even when in command of 
the army. 

6. He observed, religiously, days set apart 
by public authority for humiliation, fasting 
and prayer. In June, 1774, on such an occa- 
sion, he '' attended church, and fasted all dav.^' 



(GEORGE WASHINGTON. 87 

7. He was f*amiliar witli the Holy Scrip- 
tures ; and there is most conclusive evidence, 
that he was very uniform in his attendance on 
the duty of private prayer. This was observed 
by him in the camp, not less than in the 
quietude of retired life. 

8. Washington died the death of a Christian. 
First. Though he believed from the commence- 
ment of the attack that he should not recover, 
he was perfectly self-collected, arranged his 
affairs with entire composure of mind, and at 
no time betrayed any other feeling than that 
of resignation to the divine will and pleasure. 
Secondly. Though his sufferings were great, lie 
endured them with the most perfect patience 
and resignation, only remarking, as he did 
once or twice, "I should have been glad, had 
it pleased God, to die a little easier, but I 
doubt not it is for my good.'' Thirdly. 
'' Some hours before his departure, he made 
request that every person should leave tlie 
room, that he miglit be alone for a short 
time.'' This request, considered in connexion 
with his long-continued habit of private prayer, 
is full of important meaning. Fourthly. Death 
itself to him had no terrors. '' Doctor," said 
he, a short time before he expired, " I die hard, 
but I am not afraid to die ;" and the same 
writer, one of the tlien rectors of Mount Ver- 



88 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

non parish, says, tliat in the moment of death, 
"• he closed his eyes for the last time with his 
own hands, folded his arms decently on his 
breast, then breathing out, ' Father of mercies, 
take me to thyself^ he fell asleep/^ 

It is in view of such evidence that we find 
the following tribute, in the Encyclopaedia of 
Religious Knowledge : — 

" History furnishes no parallel to the cha- 
racter of Washington. He stands on an un- 
approached eminence, distinguished almost 
beyond humanity for self-command, intre- 
pidity, soundness of judgment, rectitude of 
purpose, and deep, ever-active piety. Wash- 
ington Avas a man of prayer. His exalted 
character was formed under the influence of 
Christian principles. ^^ 

Not less honourable is the testimony of an 
English writer, who says : " Washington was 
lately a living character, and generally al- 
lowed to be one of the first warriors, the first 
of politicians, and the worthiest of men. This 
same gentleman is the delight of ' an admir- 
ing and astonished world,' and yet — hear it, 
Oye minute philosoj)hers of degenerate Europe 
— he was a Christian.'^ 



REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS. 89 

At almost every step in the drawing up of 
these sketches a difficulty presents itself. Not 
only do the young and inexperienced seem to 
be under the delusion, that there is some in- 
congruity between the principles of Christian- 
ity and the sterner duties of life, but the same 
infatuation seems to have seized on those who 
have written the biographies of our great men. 
While every other excellence of their charac- 
ter is set in strong relief, and even the per- 
sonal appearance minutely described, their 
religioiis clim^acter — that on which they set their 
liighest value, and that which was the basis 
of every other excellence which they possessed 
— is passed over by a single word, or perhaps 
a mere allusion, or, it may be, left in doubt. 
This is particularly apt to be the case when 
reference is made to our military or naval 
officers ; as though indeed these could not be 
Christians. Let the lives of Colonel Gardiner 
and of Washington set this question forever at 
rest, as regards men engaged in military pur- 
suits. But Washington stands not alone among 
our revolutionary heroes. Many of tliem were 
as distinguished for their piety as for their 
patriotism. 



90 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



COLONEL TIMOTHY PICKERING, 

Among the first and the bravest in resistance 
of British aggression, was a Christian. " The 
Bible was the object of his habitual study and 
meditation, and the religion which he had ex- 
amined and professed in his early manhood 
received his obedience and support through 
a long life, and was found an all-sufficient 
source of comfort, resignation, peace, and sa- 
tisfaction, on the bed of death.^^ 



COLONEL ISAAC SHELBY, 

A NATIVE of Maryland, who led on many a 
hard-fought battle in our Eevolution, and 
whose gallantry and patriotism in our last 
war were acknowledged not only by his su- 
perior officer, but by resolution in the legisla- 
ture of Kentucky, and by a vote of thanks 
from congress, awarding a gold medal as a 
testimony of its sense of his illustrious services, 
was a Christian. " In the vigour of life, he 
had dedicated himself to God, and sought an 
interest in the merits of the Eedeemer. He 
was for many years a member of the Presby- 
terian Church, and in his latter days he was 



JOHIS' BROOKS. 91 

the chief instrument in erecting a house of 
worship on his own land.'^ 



MAJOR-GEXERAL BENJAMIN LINCOLN, 

A NATIVE of Massachusetts, but whose distin- 
guished military talents led congress to ap- 
point him to the command of the Southern 
army in 1778, '^was a practical and rational 
Christian from his childhood up, and to his 
practice joined also the profession of his princi- 
ples, being, during most of his life, a com- 
municant, and for many years a deacon in the 
Church where he worshipped. Amidst all the 
licentiousness of the army, no stain came upon 
his character, and no impurity fell from his 
lips.'^ 

MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN BROOKS, 

Of Massachusetts, afterwards governor of tliat 
State, '^ was a Christian in the best sense of 
the word ; in heart, in principle, in action 
penetrated with the influence of the gospel. 
He paid throughout life undeviating respect 
to the sacred offices of religion, and died con- 
soled with its hopes, in possession of his rea- 
son to the last.'^ 



92 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPIiy. 



BRIGADIER-aEjVTERAL ELIEZER BROOKS, 

Distinguished among tlie heroes of White 
Plains, ^^ was a firm believer in the doctrines 
of Christianity, and in his advanced years ac- 
cepted the office of deacon in the Church at 
Lincoln, Mass. This office he ranked above 
all others which he had sustained in life/^ 



GENERAL MATTHEW CLARKSON, 

One of the heroes of vStillwater, was ** amia- 
ble, frank, aftectionate, pure, and beneficent; 
and his character was crowned by an exalted 
piety/' 



ISAAC NEWTON. 93 



CHAPTER III. 

SIR ISAAC NEWTON DR. DAVID RITTENHOUSE — ORICHTON 

BARATIER PASCAL GROTIUS HORROX GASSENDI 

JOHN JANEWAY — JAMES BRAINERD TAYLOR, 

ISAAC NEWTON. 

Isaac Newton was born in Lincolnshire, Eng- 
land, 1642. He has been pronounced "a 
most celebrated philosopher and mathemati- 
cian, and one of the greatest geniuses that 
ever appeared in the world. ^' At the age of 
eighteen he entered Trinity College ; and at 
twenty-two made his discovery of a new me- 
thod of infinite series and fluxions. In 1669, 
he was elected to the mathematical chair at 
Cambridge ; and in 1687 published his Prin- 
eipia, which performance has set his name 
above all the philosophers of both ancient and 
modern times. In 1703, he was elected presi- 
dent of the Eoyal Society ; and for twenty- 
five years, till the day of his death, adorned 
the chair of that learned body. In 1705 lie 
was knighted by Queen Anne, by whom, as 
well as by George I., he was greatly favoured. 
His powers of mind were wonderfully com- 
prehensive and penetrating. Fontenelle says 
of him, '' that in learning mathematics, he 



94 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

did not study Euclid, who ^seemed to him too 
plain and simple, and unworthy of taking up 
his time. He understood him almost before 
he read him ; a cast of his eye on the contents 
of the theorems of that great mathematician, 
seemed to be sufficient to make him master 
of them.'^ Thomas Dick says : — " Sir Isaac 
Newton, the fame of whose genius has ex- 
tended over the whole civilized world, made 
his discoveries in geometry and fluxions, 
and laid the foundation of his two celebrated 
works, his Principia and Optics, by the time 
he was twenty-four years of age ; and yet 
these works contain so many abstract, pro- 
found, and sublime truths, that only the flrst- 
rate mathematicians are qualified to under- 
stand and appreciate them.'^ The same wri- 
ter adds : " Amidst all the sublime investiga- 
tions of physical and mathematical science in 
which he engaged, and amidst the variety of 
books he had constantly before him, the Bible 
was that which he studied with the greatest 
application ; and his meekness and modesty 
were no less admirable than the variety and 
extent of his intellectual acquirements.'^ 
Bishop Watson says : " Newton accounted the 
Scriptures the most sublime philosophy ; and 
never mentioned the word — God — but with a 
pause.'' 



ISAAC JS'EWTON. 95 

A biographer says : *^ To his other great 
qualities, he added the virtues of piety, and 
religious infidelity he marked with abhor- 
rence ; no remark of levity or indifference on 
the powers of the Deity, or on revelation, ever 
was made in his presence without drawing 
from him the severest censure ; and while he 
made the Bible his favourite study, he em- 
ployed some portion of his time in proving the 
great truths of the prophetical writers of 
Scripture/^ His readiness to rebuke impiety 
is illustrated in his Life, as given us by Dr. 
Brewster : " Immorality and impiety he never 
permitted to pass unreproved; and when Dr. 
Halley ventured to say anything disrespect- 
ful to religion, he invariably checked him, 
and said, " I have studied these things — you 
have nof 

Permit me to add the testimony of the pious 
and learned Dr. Doddridge, to this, the most 
interesting part of this great man's charac- 
ter. " According to the best information/' 
says he, " whether public or private, I could 
ever obtain, his firm faith in the divine re- 
velation, discovered itself in the most genuine 
fruits of substantial virtue and piety ; and 
consequently gives us the justest reason to 
conclude that he is now rejoicing in tlie happy 
effects of it infinitely more than in all the ap- 



96 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

plause which his philosophical works have 
produced him, though they have commanded 
a fame lasting as the world/ ^ 



DAVID RITTEKHOUSE. 

Of whose life can a sketch more properly be 
made to follow that of Sir Isaac Newton, than 
of our own Rittenhouse ? For the character 
and works of Newton he cherished the highest 
veneration ; and in his modest and unassum- 
ing character, as well as in his wonderful in- 
tellectual powers, he strikingly resembled 
him. 

David Eittenhouse was born near German- 
town, Penn., April 8, 1732 ; and was designed 
by his father for the occupation of a husband- 
man. In Norristown, Avhich early became his 
residence, there were no schools at Avhich any- 
thing more was taught than reading and 
writing in the English language and the 
simplest rules of arithmetic. Beyond these 
acquisitions he was self-taught. 

Mathematics, astronomy, and optics, were 
among his earliest pursuits, accompanied by 
a most extraordinary development of me- 
chanical skill. He succeeded in obtaining 
the use of some books ; and he early made 
himself master of Sir Isaac Newton's Prinei- 



DAVID RITTENII0U8E. 97 

pia, through the medium of Mott\s transla- 
tion, and studied the science of fluxions ; of 
this invention he conceived himself at first to 
be the author, nor was he undeceived for some 
years, when he ascertained that a conte'st had 
been carried on between Sir Isaac Newton and 
Leibnitz, for the honour of the discovery. On 
this Dr. Eush remarks : — " What a mind was 
here ! without literary friends or society, and 
with but two or three books, he became, be- 
fore he reached his twenty-fourth year, the 
rival of the two greatest mathematicians in 
Europe V' 

A time-piece, a thermometer, and an orrery, 
all of wonderful ingenuity, and of exquisite 
workmanship, were successively produced by 
him. 

In 1769, he calculated and observed the 
transit of Venus, — a phenomenon which had 
been observed but twice before since the crea- 
tion of the Avorld, and which none then living 
could ever witness again. The astronomers 
of Europe had to depend on the observations 
made in America ; and those of Eittenhouse 
were received with great favour by the whole 
philosophical world. Mr. Ludlam, one of the 
vico-pvesidents of the Philosophical Society of 
London, and an eminent astronomer, tlius 

writes : ^' No astronomers could better de- 

7 



98 christia:; liography. 

serve all possible encouragement, whether 
we consider their care and diligence in mak- 
ing their observations, their fidelity in relat- 
ing what was done, or the clearness and ac- 
curacy of their reasoning on this curious and 
difiicult subject; The more I read the trans- 
actions of your society, (the American Philo- 
sophical,) the more I honour and esteem the 
members of it. There is not another society 
in the world, that can boast of a member such as 
Mr. Eittenhouse.'^ Dr. Maskelyne, astro- 
nomer royal at Greenwich, and the Swedish 
astronomers, bore a similar testimony. His 
observations on a comet which made its ap- 
pearance the next year, attracted nearly equal 
attention. 

" Though so ardently attached to the study 
of his choice,'^ says the author of a biographi- 
cal sketch in the National Portrait Gallery, 
'^ he had paid attention to theology, and was 
well acquainted with practical metaphysics ; 
a great reader, a musician, and a poet ; had 
acquired an intimate knowledge of the French, 
German, and Dutch languages, in which he 
took great delight to peruse the works of the 
learned of those countries. His name was 
known and revered in every place where 
science was respected. Wherever he went he 
was honoured.'^ 



DAVID RITTENHOUSE. 99 

In 1771, Mr. Eittenhouse was elected one 
of the secretaries of the American Philosophi- 
cal Society. In 1789, the honorary degree of 
doctor of laws was conferred upon him by 
the College of New Jersey ; and in 1791, on 
the death of Dr. Franklin, he was elected 
President of the American Philosophical So- 
ciety. The next year, he was elected a mem- 
ber of the American Academy of Sciences at 
Boston ; and in 1795, a member of the Eoyal 
Society of London. This honour had been 
previously conferred upon only three or four 
Americans. 

Such was Dr. Eittenhouse ; and such the 
proud eminence in the world of letters, to 
which he had raised himself. 

The members of his family were mostly of 
the Society of Friends ; and Dr. Eittenhouse 
never attached himself to any particular 
Church. In a conversation with the Eev. Dr. 
Sproat, a short time before his death, he de- 
clared that ^*he could with truth say, that 
ever since he had examined Christianity and 
thought upon the subject, he was a firm be- 
liever in it ; and that he expected salvation 
only in the way of the gospel.'^ 

The biographical sketch before referred to 
says : " Eittenhouse was not only practically 
a Christian, but he believed empluiticnllv in 



100 CHRISTIAN BIOGKAPHY. 

the Christian revelation ; forming another 
triumph ^over the vague assertion that men of 
genius are unbelievers. Newton and Eitten- 
house will outweigh a host of thoughtless 
blasphemers/^ And an English writer thus 
introduces a quotation from Dr. Eush : *^ One 
of the most extraordinary philosophers of the 
present age was the late David Eittenhouse, 
of America. Dr. Eush, of Philadelphia, who 
is himself an able philosopher and a deter- 
mined Christian, observes very justly, when 
speaking of the decease of Eittenhouse, who 
left our world January 26, 1796, that it is no 
small triumph to the friends of revelation to 
observe, in this age of infidelity, that our reli- 
gion has been admitted, and even defended, 
by men of the most exalted understanding, 
and of the strongest reasoning powers. The 
single testimony of David Eittenhouse in its 
favour outweighs the declamations of Avhole 
nations against it.'^ 

The idea that philosophy is at variance 
Avith religion can only be the result of the 
most consummate ignorance. Let him who 
doubts this, make it a subject of investigation. 



JAMES CRICHTON. 101 



JAMES CRICHTOK 



In " Dick's Philosophy of a Future State/' he 
has selected, as examples of the vigour and 
comprehension of the human faculties, and as 
illustrating the variety and extent of the ac- 
quisitions of which the human mind is capa- 
ble, the names of Pascal, Grotius, Crichton, 
Gassendi, Horrox, Newton, and Baratier. 
These seem to have been selected purely with 
reference to the possession of great mental 
power, without any regard to their religious 
or moral character. I purpose to inquire 
how these mighty minds — the ornaments of 
the intellectual world — have treated the 
claims of Christianity. Of one of these, New- 
ton, I have already furnished a sketch. New- 
ton was a Christian. 

James Crichton, always known in conse- 
quence of his distinguished endowments, by 
the designation of the Admirable Crichton, 
was a Scotchman of the sixteenth century. 
The year of his birth is not known. He was 
educated at Perth and at the University of St. 
Andrews, where he made such wonderful pro- 
gress, that at the age of twenty, he had run 
through the whole circle of the sciences, as 
they were then understood, and could write 



102 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

and speak to perfection ten different lan- 
guages/ Thus gifted with mental endow- 
ments, and aided by all the advantages of a 
graceful person, elegant manners, and polite 
accomplishments, he travelled to Paris, where 
he publicly challenged the most renowned 
scholars, to dispute with him in any art or 
science while they pleased, and in twelve dif- 
ferent languages. On the appointed day, he 
appeared at the college of Navarre, and from 
nine in the morning till six in the evening, 
he so defeated his opponents, and astonished 
his auditors, that the president, in admiration, 
with four of the most eminent professors of the 
university, presented him with a diamond 
ring, and a purse of gold, as a token of their 
approbation. At Eome, at Venice, at Padua, 
and at Mantua, he attracted equal admiration. 
At Mantua, he died by violence ; and may be 
said to have lived to no very important pur- 
pose, but to show the world a specimen of vast 
but unsanctified intellectual power. 



JOHN PHILIP BARATIEK 

John Philip Baratier, was born January 
19, 1721, at Schwabach, and is justly consid- 
ered a prodigy of learning and genius. *' At 
the age of five,'' says Mr. Dick, " he under- 



JOHN PHILIP BARATIER. 1(J3 

stood the Greek, Latin, German, and French 
languages ; at the age of nine, he could trans- 
late any part of the Hebrew Scriptures into 
Latin, and could repeat the whole Hebrew 
Psalter ; and before he had completed his 
tenth year, he drew up a Hebrew lexicon of 
uncommon and difficult words, to which he 
added many curious critical remarks. In his 
thirteenth year he published, in two volumes 
octavo, a translation from the Hebrew of 
Eabbi Benj amines " Travels in Europe, Asia, 
and Africa,'^ with historical and critical notes 
and dissertations ; the whole of which he com- 
pleted in four months. In the midst of these 
studies, he prosecuted philosophical and ma- 
thematical pursuits, and in his fourteenth 
year, invented a method of discovering the 
longitude at sea, which exhibited the strongest 
marks of superior abilities. ^^ In his thirteenth 
year, he was offered, by the university of Halle, 
the degree of M. A. With a constitution na- 
turally delicate, he could not long endure the 
excessive application of so gigantic a mind. 
He died at Halle in his twentieth year. 

The only reference I can now meet with to 
his moral habits is found in the following: 
short passage : — 

" In his domestic economy he was very tem- 
perate; he ate little flesh, lived totally on 



104 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

milk, tea, bread, and fruit ; he disliked wine ; 
he had an aversion to dancing, music, and the 
sports of the field, so that he wished for no 
recreation from study hut in walking, or in 
the conversation of a few friends, whom he 
loved and courted with all the openness and 
unreserved gayety of a generouis heart." 

The writer of these sketches has no other 
evidence than is here presented, that either of 
these men was practically pious. Baratier, 
however, may have been as pious as any of 
the learned men of his day ; and Crichton 
lived in an age of great moral darkness. 



BLAISE PASCAL. 

Pascal was born at Clermont, in the province 
of Auvergne, 19th June, 1623. He was de- 
scended from one of the best families in that 
province. Young Pascal from his infancy dis- 
played extraordinary abilities ; he inquired 
into the reasons and causes of everything, and 
never was satisfied but with what appeared 
most probable and rational. His father, 
though an excellent scholar and an able 
mathematician, studiously kept from his son 
all mathematical books, that his attention 
might be confined to belles lettres and classi- 
cal knowledge. Before he had attained his 



BLAISE PASCAL. 105 

twelfth year, however, and while immersed in 
the study of languages, without books and 
Avithout an instructor he discovered and de- 
monstrated most of the propositions in the 
first book of Euclid, before he knew that such 
a book was in existence, to the astonishment 
of every mathematician ; so that, at that early 
age, he was an inventor of geometrical science. 
At the age of sixteen he composed a treatise 
on Conic Sections, which, in the judgment of 
men of the greatest abilities, was viewed as an 
astonishing effort of the human mind, and was 
by Des Cartes attributed to the labours of the 
father, and not to the son. At nineteen years 
of age he contrived an arithmetical machine, 
much admired for its ingenuity ; and at twenty- 
three he saw, corrected, and improved the 
Torricellian experiments ; and soon after solved 
a problem, proposed by Mersennus, which had 
hitherto perplexed the ablest mathematicians 
of Europe. By the age of twenty-four he had 
acquired a proficiency in almost every branch 
of human knowledge, " when,^^ says Mr. Dick, 
" his mind became entirely absorbed in the 
exercises of religion. ^^ 

Pascal has been spoken of as " perhaps the 
most brilliant intellect that ever lighted on 
this lower world,^^ and yet we thus see him at 
the age of twenty-four, in the language of his 



/- 



106 CHRISTIAN BIOGEAPHY. 

biographer, " in the midst of his increasing 
reputation, all at once renouncing literary and 
mathematical pursuits for religion ; and after 
being one of the greatest of philosophers, be- 
coming one of the most humble and penitent 
of devotees/' 

The celebrated Boyle, speaking of this dis- 
tinguished person, says : ^' A hundred volumes 
of religious discourses are not of so much avail 
to confound the impious, as a simple account 
of the life of Pascal. His humility and his 
devotion mortify the libertines more than if 
they were attacked by a dozen missionaries. 
They can no longer assert that piety is confined 
to men of little minds, when they behold the 
highest degree of it in a geometrician of the 
first rank, the most acute metaphysician, and 
one of the most penetrating minds that ever 
existed.^' 

The idea seems almost to have become 
general, that it is a mark of great sagacity or 
penetration to entertain sceptical views of re- 
ligion. The strange error has gone every- 
where abroad among the unthinking, that to 
be a philosopher one must be a sceptic ; on 
the contrary, I do not hesitate to assert that 
for one who has been instructed in the Bible 
and in the principles of religion to entertain 
serious doubts of the inspiration of the one, or 



BLAISE PASCAL. 107 

the truth and the excellency of the other, fur- 
nishes proof positive either of the depravity 
of his heart or of the weakness of his intellect. 
Pascal, with a mind wonderfully comprehen- 
sive and sagacious, entertained the most ex- 
alted sentiments of the Christian religion, and 
never had the least doubt of its divine authority. 

This information we have from his biogra- 
pher, who knew him well, and Avho says, ^' that 
by the instructions and example of his father 
great reverence for religion was early im- 
pressed upon his mind, and continued with 
him through life, and that he was always in a 
high degree opposed to the principles of infi- 
delity.^' 

To the pious reader, the following lines, 
found among his papers after his decease, will 
furnish a pleasing picture of the mind of this 
extraordinary man : — 

" I respect poverty, because Jesus Christ re- 
spected it. I respect riches, because they fur- 
nish the means of relieving the distressed. I 
do not return evil to those who have done me 
an injury. I endeavour to be sincere and faith- 
ful to all men ; but I have a peculiar tender- 
ness towards those with whom God has caused 
me to be intimately connected. Whether I 
am alone or in company, I consider myself as 
in the sight of God, who will judge my actions, 



108 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

and to whom I consecrate tliem all. These 
are my sentiments ; and I daily bless my Ke- 
deemer, who has impressed them npon me, 
and who, by the operation of his grace, has 
taken away the concupiscence, pride, ambition, 
and misery, to which I was naturally subject. 
I owe my deliverance to his power and good- 
ness, having nothing of myself but imbecility 
and corruption. ^^ 

In Jesuph^s Life of Pascal, it is said : " This 
great man, during some of the latter years of 
his life, spent his whole time in prayer and in 
reading the Holy Scriptures ; and in this he 
took incredible delight.^' His last words were 
^' May God never forsake me !'^ and he died full 
of peace and hope. 



HUGO GROTIUS. 

This eminent scholar was born at Delft, in 
Holland, in 1583. At the age of thirteen he 
greatly distinguished himself at the University 
of Ley den. At the age of fourteen he ven- 
tured to form literary plans which required an 
amazing extent of knowledge, and he executed 
them in such perfection that the literary world 
was struck with astonishment. In his fifteenth 
year he accompanied the Dutch ambassador 
to Paris, where he w^as received with every 



HUGO GROTIUS. lOfj 

mark of kindness by the court, and presented 
by Henry IV. with his picture and a gold 
chain. The University of Paris also paid its 
respects to this learned youth, and granted 
him the degree of doctor of laws, before his 
return to Holland. At the age of seventeen 
he entered on the profession of an advocate, 
and pleaded his first cause at Delft, in a man- 
ner that acquired for him the greatest reputa- 
tion. He fully sustained the reputation thus 
early acquired, by a life filled Avith vicissitude, 
and died at the age of sixtj-two. 

The Scriptures were the favourite study of 
Grotius. He always devoted a part of the day 
to them ; and wrote a commentary on both the 
Old and New Testament. He also wrote a 
treatise on the truth of the Christian religion, 
which is well known to the Christian student. 
I will only add the testimony of the Encyclo- 
psedia of Eeligious Knowledge, a work whose 
testimony is the more valuable as it is cau- 
tiously given : — 

" Grotius was master of all that is wortli 
knowing in sacred and profiane literature. 
There was no art or science with Avhich lie 
was not acquainted. He possessed a clear 
head, an excellent judgment, universal learn- 
ing, immense reading, and a sincere, unwaver- 
ing love of truth and Christianity.^' 



110 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



JEREMIAH HORROX. 



*' Jeremiah Horrox, a name celebrated in the 
annals of astronomy, before he attained the 
age of seventeen had acquired, solely by his 
own industry and the help of a few Latin au- 
thors, a most extensive and accurate know- 
ledge of astronomy and of the branches of 
mathematical learning connected with it. He 
composed astronomical tables for himself, and 
corrected the errors of the most celebrated 
astronomers of his time. He calculated a tran- 
sit of the planet Venus across the sun's disc, 
and was the first of mortals who beheld this 
singular phenomenon, which is now considered 
of so much importance in astronomical science.'^ 

Such is the brief account given of this 
young astronomer by Mr. Dick. He was born 
about 1619, near Liverpool; was educated at 
Emanuel College, Cambridge ; and died pre- 
maturely, to the great loss of science, in 
1640-1, aged twenty-one. His theory of 
lunar motion Nev/ton himself afterwards 
adopted. 

A full biography of this distinguished 
young man we have not access to, but find 
him referred to in the Encyclopasdia of lieli- 
gious Knowledge, as ''a young and religious 



JEREMIAH HORROX. HI 

astronomer/' To this I add a notice of the 
important calculation and discovery made by 
him, which I find in ^'Barrett's Geography of 
the Heavens/' as illustrating both his love of 
science and his piety to God. 

",The tables of Kepler, constructed upon 
the observations of Tycho Brahe, indicated a 
transit of Venus in 1631, but none was ob- 
served. Horrox, without much assistance 
from books and instruments, set himself to in- 
quire into the error of the tables, and found 
that such a phenomenon might be expected to 
happen in 1639. He repeated his calcula- 
tions during the interval, with all the careful- 
ness and enthusiasm of a scholar, ambitious 
of being the first to predict and observe a 
celestial phenomenon which, from the creation 
of the world, had never been witnessed. Con- 
fident of the result, he communicated his ex- 
pected triumph to a confidential friend, resid- 
ing in Manchester, and desired him to watch 
for the event and to take observations. So 
anxious was Horrox not to fail of witnessing 
it himself, that he commenced his observa- 
tions the day before it was expected, and re- 
sumed them at the rising of the sun on the 
morrow. But the very hour when his calcula- 
tions led him to expect the visible appearance 
of Venus upon the sun's disc was also the ap- 



112 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

pointed hour for the public worship of God on 
the Sabbath. The delay of a few minutes 
might deprive him forever of the opportunity 
of observing the transit. If its very com- 
mencement were not noticed, clouds might in- 
tervene and conceal it until the sun should 
set, and nearly a century and a half would 
elapse before another opportunity would occur. 
He had been watching for the event with the 
most ardent anticipation for eight years, and 
the result promised much benefit to the cause 
of science. Notwithstanding all this, JSorrox 
twice suspended his observations, and twice re- 
paired to the house of God, the great Author of 
the bright worlds he delighted to contemplate. 
When his duty was thus performed, and he 
had returned to his chamber the second time, 
his love of science was gratified with full suc- 
cess, and he saw what no mortal eye had ob- 
served before. 

'* If anything can add interest to this inci- 
dent, it is the modesty with which the young 
astronomer apologizes to the world for sus- 
pending his observations at all. * I observed 
it,^ says he, * from sunrise till nine oVlock, 
again a little before ten, and lastly at noon, 
and from one to two o'clock ; the rest of the 
day being devoted to higher duties, which 
might not be neglected for these pastimes.^ '' 



PETER GASSENDI. 113 



PETER GASSENDI. 

Gassendi was a celebrated philosopher of 
France, and was born 2 2d January, N. S., 
1592, near Digne, in Provence. At the age 
of four he declaimed little sermons of his own 
composition, and even in infancy amused him- 
self by gazing at the moon and stars. At the 
age of seven he spent whole nights in observ- 
ing the motions of the heavenly bodies, of 
which he acquired at that early age a con- 
siderable knowledge. The taste for astrono- 
my, thus early formed, he never relaxed till 
his reputation became so extensive that in 
1645 he was appointed professor of mathe- 
matics at Paris. Meantime he had been en- 
gaged in other and various pursuits. At the 
age of sixteen he was professor of rhetoric at 
Digne, and three years after succeeded his 
old master as professor of philosophy at Aix.. 

He wrote the life of Tycho Brahe, with an 
account of Copernicus, Purhachius, and Pyro 
Montanus. He maintained a public contro- 
versy with Des Cartes, and with Leibnitz ; and 
his correspondence shows that he was tlie 
friend of Kepler, Galileo, Kircher, and other 
distinguished scholars of his day. 

Mr. Dick himself says : '' His vast know- 



114 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

ledge of philosophy and mathematics was or- 
namented by a sincere attachment to the 
Christian religion, and a life formed upon its 
principles and precepts ;^^ which is fully sus- 
tained by the notices of biographical dic- 
tionaries. 

Having taken a review of those distinguish- 
ed men, selected from the whole world, as spe- 
cimens of vast mental power and of great 
extent of learning, may I not ask the young 
who have looked over these sketches, to pause? 
Let them contrast these bright names with 
the sceptics of our day, for they cannot be 
compared. Philosophy ! half the pretended 
sceptics among us do not know the meaning 
of the word ! Newton accounted " the Scrip- 
tures of God the most sublime philosophy.'^ 
And says the immortal Chillingworth, " Pro- 
pose to me anything out of the Bible, and re- 
quire whether I believe it or not, and seem 
it never so incomprehensible to human reason, 
I will subscribe it with hand and heart ; as 
knowing no demonstration can be stronger 
than this — God hath said so, therefore it is 
true.'' This was a part of his philosophy. 
Those who have walked in this light — the 
light of the revelation of God — have lain down 
in peace; but God has said, '' Behold, all ye 
that kindle a fire, that walk in the light of 



JOHN J ANEW AY. 115 

ycmr fire, and of tlie sparks that ye have kin- 
dled ; this shall ye have at mine hand — ye 
shall lie down in sor7vw,^^ And how fearfully 
has this threat been executed ! 



JOHN JANEWAY. 

There is no scene more full of moral gran- 
deur, than that which presents the young man 
of talent and mental worth, with the world 
spread out before him, and surrounded by the 
objects of worldly ambition, devoting himself 
to the cause of religion and of human happi- 
ness. There is such a thing as a profession 
of religion from sinister considerations. But 
who, from early life, retires from the pursuit 
of worldly knowledge and philosophy, and de- 
votes the energies of a powerful and generous 
mind to the holy duties of religion, and to the 
self-sacrificing work of saving his felloAv-men, 
from sinister considerations? Even the un- 
fair spirit of infidelity itself has rarely charged 
such a course to any worse influence than that 
of superstition and enthusiasm ; but unfortu- 
nately the spirit of infidelity, after making 
such a charge, either refuses to be a witness 
of that scene which tests the strength of these 
principles and the foundation of such mon^s 
hopes, and retires from the bed of death, as an 



116 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

unwelcome place, or turns away, — in the ex- 
ercise of that omnipotent power with which 
man is armed to work out his own ruin, — still 
to disbelieve. 

The ingenuous young man, who is capable 
of appreciating either intellectual or moral 
excellence, will not refuse to contemplate the 
life and early death of a scholar. 

John Janeway was born in the year 1633, 
at Tylly, in Hertfordshire. At the age of 
twelve years, he had made a considerable pro- 
ficiency in mathematical science, and in the 
study of astronomy, and other branches of use- 
ful learning. At seventeen, he was admitted 
to King's College, in Cambridge. At eigh- 
teen, it pleased God to enlighten his under- 
standing, and to discover to him, that the 
knowledge of his Creator, and the conscious- 
ness of an interest in his love, through Jesus 
Christ, was infinitely superior to every attain- 
ment and possession of this world. At this 
time he became sensible that astronomy sur- 
veyed but a molehill, in comparison with the 
great object which the religion of Jesus con- 
templates. He now became wholly occupied 
with divine contemplations, and tasted so 
much sweetness in the knowledge of Christ, 
that it was discernible in his very appearance, 
and he "counted everything but dross and 



JOHN JANEWAY. 117 

dung, in comparison of the knowledge of 
Christ and him crucified.^^ Not that he looked 
upon human learning as useless ; but when 
fixed "below Christ, — not improved for Christ, 
or set in opposition to Christ, — he looked upon 
wisdom as folly, upon learning as madness, 
and upon genius as a curse, which would make 
a man more like the devil, more fit for his 
service, and put a greater accent upon our 
misery in another world. 

At the age of twenty, he was admitted a 
fellow of his college. Still, however, he went 
on with his religious contemplations, and be- 
came so mighty in prayer, and other sacred 
exercises, that he seemed to forget the weak- 
ness of his body. He studied much, prayed 
much, and laboured much in every way he 
could contrive to be of use to mankind, and 
to promote the honour of the Divine Being. 
Sickness came ; and his disorder, which was 
of the consumptive kind, increased rapidly 
upon him, but yet with some intervals of re- 
lief. During the greatest part of his sick- 
ness, however, he was so filled with love, and 
peace, and joy, that human language sinks 
under what he saw and felt ; he talked as if 
he had been in the third heaven, — breaking 
out, every now and then, into ecstasies of joy 
and praise. 



118 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

Much of his language has been preserved. 

About forty-eight hours before his dissolu- 
tion, he said : — " Praise is now my work, and 
I shall be engaged in that sweet employment 
forever. Come, let us lift up our voice in 
praise. I have nothing else to do. I have 
done with prayer, and all other ordinances. I 
have almost done conversing with mortals. I 
shall presently be beholding Christ himself, 
who died for me, and loved me, and washed 
me in his blood. I shall, in a few hours, be in 
eternity, singing the song of Moses, and the 
song of the Lamb. I shall presently stand 
upon the mount Sion, with an innumerable 
company of angels, and the spirits of just men 
made perfect, and Jesus the Mediator of the 
new covenant ! I shall hear the voice of 
much people, and be one among them who say 
— ' Hallelujah ! salvation, glory, and honour, 
and power be unto the Lord our God !^ And 
again we say. Hallelujah ! Me thinks I stand 
as it were one foot in heaven and the other 
on earth. Methinks I hear the melody of 
heaven, and by faith I see the angels waiting 
to carry my soul to the bosom of Jesus, and I 
shall be forever with the Lord in glory. And 
who can choose but rejoice in all this ?" 

In such a rapturous strain as this he con- 
tinued, full of praise, full of admiration, full 



JAMES BRAINERD TAYLOR. 119 

of joy, till at length, witli abundance of faith 
and fervency, he cried aloud, — " Amen ! 
Amen V^ and soon after expired. Thus did 
this favoured and happy spirit take its leave 
of the world. He died in the twenty-fifth 
year of his age. 



JAMES BRAINERD TAYLOR. 

The strong consolations which are felt by the 
sick and the dying, Avhose minds have become 
enlarged by the contemplation of sacred 
things, and whose moral feelings by cultiva- 
tion have become equal to the sublimity of 
such a scene, Dr. Priestley considers as enthu- 
siasm. But for the sanction of some such 
names, who would not exclaim — 0, the stu- 
pidity of infidelity ! But is not its stupidity 
the more apparent in its power which is thus 
exhibited, of totally obscuring the moral vision 
of intelligent and thinking man ? 

From age to age religion is the same ; and 
from age to age shall its effects on the human 
heart be the same. The scene of Christian 
triumph detailed in the last, occurred near 
two centuries since, in England. How simi- 
lar to this, was the closing scene of the life 
of Professor Hubbard, detailed in a former 
part of this work. 



120 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

James Brainerd Taylor. This excellent 
young man was born at Middle Haddam, 
Connecticut, April 15, 1801. His first deep 
impressions of religion were received from the 
remarks of a brother under his father's roof. 
When placed as a clerk in the store of a mer- 
chant of New- York, he attended the ministry 
of the Eev. Dr. Eomeyn, and then at the age 
of fifteen first united in the commemoration 
of redeeming love. He soon engaged in the 
work of Sabbath-school instruction, and by 
every other method in his power sought to 
promote his Eedeemer^s kingdom upon earth. 
In May, 1819, he was present at the sailing 
of Dr. Scudder with other missionaries for 
Ceylon, and from that time felt that he must 
renounce the merchant's life for the ministe- 
rial life. His friends approving this course, 
he entered the academy of Lawrenceville, 
New-Jersey, in 1820, and in November, 1823, 
joined the sophomore class at Nassau Hall. 
His whole academic life was characterized by 
communion with God, zeal in the performance 
of his duties, and unquenchable desires, coupled 
with untiring efforts, to be useful. Twenty or 
thirty souls, it is believed, were turned to God 
through his instrumentality. His example 
also is a complete solution of the question — 
'' Can a student enjoy religion at college ?'' 



JAMES BRAINERD TAYLOR, 121 

His own language is : ^' Their walls cannot 
shut out the Lord, and where he is, there is 
heaven. I do not find the obstacles I antici- 
pated. My room has been made a Bethel ; 
and I find it is growing better and better, in- 
stead of diminishing. My cup overflows." 
And about two years after, he says : " I have 
had during the last thirteen months the wit- 
nessing of God's Spirit with mine that I am 
born from above, and am travelling towards 
heaven. The fruit of the Spirit has been from 
day to day, love, peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost." In September, 1826, Mr. Taylor, 
having finished his collegiate course, left 
Princeton for New-Haven, to pursue the study 
of theology. Early in 1827, he was seized 
with hemorrhage at the lungs. This cutting 
off* his cherished hopes, must have been truly 
bitter, yet such grace was given him, that we 
hear him pronounce it " sweet — sweet — sweet, 
beyond expression." In January, 1829, he 
visited Georgia for his health ; returned to 
Connecticut apparently better, in the sum- 
mer ; received license from the Middlesex As- 
sociation ; but soon found it necessary to re- 
turn to the South. He died at the Union 
Theological Seminary, in Prince Edward, Vir- 
ginia, March 28, 1829 ; not quite twenty-eight 
years of age, but in full assurance of a glori- 



122 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

ous immortality. On liis dying-bed, he re- 
marked, " that he had endeavoured to live in 
such a way, that when he came to die he 
should have nothing to do but to die.'^ His 
last words were, " Strive ! strive — V^ His friend 
inquiring, '^ Strive to do what f he added, 
" To enter into the kingdom of heaven.'^ 
Thus was his ruling passion strong in death. 
What he exhorted others to be while living, 
what he w^as himself, that, though dead, he 
yet speaketh, " Strive to be uncommon Chris- 
tians V 



JOHN CARVER. 128 



CHAPTER IV. 

JOHN CAEVER — ^WILLIAM BRADFORD — EDWARD WINSLOW — 
JOHN WINTHROP — JOHN ENDICOTT — JONATHAN BELCHER — 
JAMES BOWDOIN — SAMUEL ADAMS — ^JOHN BROOKS — SAMUEL 

PHILLIPS ^WILLIAM PHILLIPS ISAAC PARKER THEOPHILUS 

PARSONS. 

(i^ohnntixs of pismoutfe Colony. 
JOHN CARVER 

Was the first governor of Plymouth colony. 
He was one of the first emigrants, in the May- 
flower, and was one of the company who 
landed upon the rock of Plymouth. He was 
unanimously elected governor of the colony, 
and was distinguished for his prudence, his 
disinterestedness, and his integrity. The in- 
terests of the colony were his first care, and 
the people confided in him as their friend and 
father. 

Says a biographer: ^' Piety, humility, and 
benevolence, were eminent traits in his charac- 
ter. In the time of the general sickness which 
befell the colony, after he had himself re- 
covered, he was assiduous in attending the sick 
and performing the most humiliating services 
for them, without any distinction of persons or 
characters." 



124 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



WILLIAM BRADFORD 

Was the second governor of Plymouth colony ; 
and such was his reputation, that for thirty 
years he was placed at the head of govern- 
ment — that is, as long as he lived, with the 
exception of five years, when, at his own re- 
quest, the people did not re-elect him. 

A biographer says : " After an infirm and 
declining state of health for a number of 
months, he was suddenly seized by an acute 
disease. May 7, 1657. In the night his mind 
was so enraptured by contemplations upon re- 
ligious truth and the hopes of futurity, that 
he said to his friends in the morning : ' The 
good Spirit of God has given me a pledge of 
my happiness in another world, and the first 
fruits of eternal glory. ^ The next day he was 
removed from the present state of existence, 
aged sixty-eight. His life was exemplary and 
useful. He was watchful against sin, a man 
of prayer, and conspicuous for holiness/' 

EDWARD WmSLOW 

Was the third governor of Plymouth colony. 
He shared largely in the confidence of the 
colony, and was twice, or oftener, sent to Eng- 



JOHN ENDICOTT. 125 

land as an agent, and while there he exerted 
his influence to form the Society for Propagat- 
ing the Gospel in New-England, which was in- 
corporated in 1649, and of which he was an 
active member. Governor Winslow was a de- 
cided Christian. 

Such were the men who were placed at the 
head of affairs in the early periods of our 
country's history ; and it is to them and their 
pious influence we are indebted for the glori- 
ous results which have followed. 



JOHN WINTHROP 

Was flrst governor of Massachusetts, and was 
annually elected for eleven years. His time, 
his exertions, his interests, were all devoted to 
the infant plantation. '^ He was a most faith- 
ful and upright magistrate, and exemplary 
Christian.^' 



JOHN ENDICOTT, 

Elected governor of Massachusetts in 1(344, 
three years after Governor Winthrop, was a 
sincere and zealous Puritan, though he was 
more rigid in his princij)les and severe in the 
execution of the laws against those who ditlered 



126 CHKISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

from the religion of the colony, than could be 
justified except by a reference to the spirit of 
that age. So far as scepticism is concerned, 
he was devoted to the cause of Christianity. 

The early governors of Massachusetts colony 
are nearly all of them believed to have been 
religious. If we come down one hundred 
years in the history of the colonies it is still 
the same. 



JONATHAN BELCHER 

Was appointed governor of Massachusetts and 
New-Hampshire in 1730, which ofiice he filled 
for eleven years. He was subsequently gover- 
nor of the province of New-Jersey, and was the 
chief patron and benefactor of Princeton Col- 
lege. He possessed, in an uncommon degree, 
gracefulness of person, dignity of deportment, 
and an unwavering regard to what he judged 
to be duty. The highest traits of his charac- 
ter rested on his deep and unaflFected piety. 

A biographer says of him : " He seems to 
have possessed, in addition to his other accom- 
plishments, that piety whose lustre is eternal. 
His religion was not a mere formal thing 
which he received from tradition, or professed 
in conformity to the custom of the country in 
which he lived ; but it impressed his heart and 



JONATHAN BELCHER. 127 

governed his life. He had such views of the 
majesty and holiness of God, of the strictness 
and purity of the divine law, and of his own 
unworthiness and iniquity, as made him dis- 
claim all dependence on his own righteousness, 
and led him to place his whole hope for salva- 
tion on the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
w^ho appeared to him an all-sufficient and 
glorious Saviour. He expressed the humblest 
sense of his own character, and the most ex- 
alted views of the rich, free, and glorious grace 
offered in the gospel to sinners. His faith 
worked hy love, and produced the genuine 
fruits of obedience. It exhibited itself in a 
life of piety and devotion, of meekness and 
humility, of justice, truth, and benevolence. 
He searched the Holy Scriptures with the 
greatest diligence and delight. In his family 
he maintained the worship of God, himself 
reading the volume of truth, and addressing 
in prayer the Majesty of heaven and of earth, 
as long as his health and strength would 
possibly admit. In the hours of retirement 
he held intercourse with* Heaven, carefully 
redeeming time from the business of this 
world, to attend to the more* important con- 
cerns of another. Though there was nothing 
ostentatious in his religion, yet he was not 
asliamed to avow his attachment to tlie gospel 



128 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

of Christ, even wlien he exposed himself to 
ridicule and censure. He was deeply inter- 
ested in the progress of holiness and religion ; 
and as he approached the termination of his 
life he often expressed his desire to depart, 
and to enter the world of glory.'^ 



JAMES BOWDOIN, 

Second governor of Massachusetts after the 
adoption of her constitution, was not eminent 
simply as a statesman, but as a philosopher. 
It was not elevated place that made him a great 
man. He graduated at Harvard College in 
1745, where he was greatly distinguished for 
his genius and his superior attainments. 
Though left, at the age of twenty-one, in pos- 
session of an ample fortune, and thus having 
it put in his power to gratify all the giddy 
desires of youth, he, with a maturity of wisdom 
under such circumstances too rarely equalled, 
marked out for himself a course of literary 
and scientific research, to which he adhered 
through life. 

He held several responsible offices under the 
provincial government; and in 1775, a year 
the most critical and important to America, 



JAMES BOWDOJN. 12U 

he was elected president of the council of 
Massachusetts, which office he continued to fill 
most of the time till the adoption of the State 
constitution. Of the convention which formed 
this instrument he was president, and was the 
second governor under it. All these offices 
were filled with wisdom, firmness, and in- 
tegrity. 

Mr. Bowdoin was not less distinguished for 
his literary character. Suffice it to say, he 
received from the University of Edinburg, as 
well as from several others, the degree of 
LL.D., and was elected a member of the Eoyal 
Society of London and of Dublin. The Ameri- 
can Academy of Arts and Sciences, of which he 
was the first president, was formed under his 
influence. 

In relation to his religious character, a bio- 
grapher remarks : " He was deeply convinced 
of the truth and excellence of Christianity, 
and it had a constant effect on his life. As 
the hour of his departure approached he ex- 
pressed his satisfaction in the thought of 
going to the full enjoyment of God and his 
Eedeemer." 

9 



130 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



SAMUEL ADAMS, 



Successor of Governor Bowdoiii as chief 
magistrate of the commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts, was briefly noticed as one of the 
signers of the Declaration of Independence. 
He was an eminent Christian. 



JOHN BROOKS. 

Among the more recent governors of that 
State, who have been pious, and have already 
gone to reap the eternal rewards of virtue, my 
mind fixes on John Brooks, LL.D. The name 
of Dr. Brooks was mentioned among the re- 
volutionary ofiicers, but is deserving of more 
particular notice. He served his country in 
both wars, and filled many high offices in his 
State, besides the chief magistracy. 

He died a member of the Church in Med- 
ford. A short time before his death, he said : 
'^ I see nothing terrible in death. In looking 
to the future I have no fears. I know in 
whom I have believed ; and I feel a persuasion 
that all the trials appointed me, past or pre- 
sent, will result in my future and eternal 
happiness. I look back u23on my past life 
with humility. I am sensible of many imper- 



SAMUEL PHILLIPS. lol 

fections that cleave to me. I know that the 
present is neither the season nor the place 
in which to begin the preparation for death. 
Our whole life is given us for this great object, 
and the work of preparation should be early 
commenced, and be never relaxed till the end 
of our days. To Grod I can appeal, that it has 
been my humble endeavour to serve him in 
sincerity, and wherein I have failed I trust in 
his grace to forgive. I now rest my soul on 
the mercy of my adorable Creator, through 
the only mediation of his Son, our Lord. O 
what a ground of hope is there in that saying 
of an apostle, that God is, in Christ, reconcil- 
ing a guilty world unto himself, not imputing 
their trespasses unto them ! In God I have 
placed my eternal all, and into his hands I 
commit my spirit V^ 



3lttutjenattl-(Kobtrnt)rj5 of fSimsKt^yxuiin. 

SAMUEL PHILLIPS, LL.D, 

Was graduated at Harvard College in 1771. 
In 1775 he was a member of the provincial 
congress, and was constantly in public office 
till the period of his death in 1802, when he 
was lieutenant-governor of the common wealtli. 
Dr. Phillips was distinguished as the bene- 



132 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

factor of learning. He projected the academy 
at Andover, and was mucli concerned in estab- 
lishing that, as well as the academy at Exeter, 
which were founded by his father and uncle. 
To these institutions he was a distinguished 
benefactor. It is worthy of remark, as illus- 
trating the force of a worthy example, that 
his widow and son were among the principal 
founders of the theological seminary at An- 
dover. 

A biographer says : " Such was his superi- 
ority to the pride of wealth and of power, and 
such his benevolence and humility, that when 
honoured w^ith public applause and raised to 
eminence he would frequently spend the in- 
terval between the morning and evening ser- 
vices of the Sabbath, in the house of God, for 
the purpose of reading some pious book to 
those whose distant habitations prevented 
them from returning home. He was careful 
to impart religious instruction to his family, 
and he led its daily devotions with humility, 
fervour, and eloquence. He appeared to be 
continually governed by love to the Supreme 
Being, and by the desire of imitating his 
benevolence and doing good. His deep views 
of evangelical doctrine and duty, of human 
depravity and mediatorial mercy, formed his 
heart to humility, condescension, and kind- 



WILLIAM PHILLIPS. 133 

ness, and led him continually to depend on 
the grace of God through the atonement of 
his Son." 



WILLIAM PHILLIPS 

Was also lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts 
at the time of his death in 1817. He was a 
deacon in the old South Church, Boston, for 
the last twenty-three years of his life, and has 
been called by the enviable appellation of the 
Christian philanthropist 

" Deacon Phillips,'^ says a biographer, "was 
an active member of many charitable societies. 
He was, at the time of his decease, president 
of the Massachusetts Bible Society. For a 
series of years his charities had been from 
;$8,000 to ;gl 1,000 annually. Many widows 
and fatherless children were by him rescued 
from want. He bequeathed to Phillips Acad- 
emy ^15,000 ; to the Theological Institution at 
Andover, ;^10,000 ; to the Society for Propagat- 
ing the Gospel among the Indians, the Massa- 
chusetts Bible Society, the Foreign Mission 
Board, the Congregational Society, the Educa- 
tion Society, and the Massachusetts General 
Hospital, each $5,000 ; to the Medical Dispen- 
sary ;$3,000 ; to the Female Asylum, and tlie 
Asylum for Boys, each ;$!2,000; in all, j!G2,000. 



134 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



From among the chief justices of Massachu- 
setts, who have been distinguished for piety 
and learning, I select two. The ground of 
the selection is, that they have lived so re- 
cently, that everybody remembers them to 
have been esteemed eminent jurists. 



ISAAC PARKER, LL.D., 

Was born in Boston, in 1768, and graduated 
at Harvard College, in 1786. He commenced 
the practice of law in the then district of 
Maine, and was elected a member of con- 
gress. In 1806, he was appointed a judge 
of the supreme court ; and in 1814, was 
made chief justice, of which office he, with 
high reputation and faithfulness, discharged 
the duties sixteen years — till the day of his 
death. He died suddenly, May 25th, 1830, 
of apoplexy. 

His biographer says of him : -^ He was a 
distinguished scholar and friend of literature. 
For eleven years he was a trustee of Bowdoin 
College, and for twenty years an overseer of 
Harvard College. He was a man of great 



THEOPHILUS PARSONS. 135 

moral worth, and a firm believer in the Chris- 
tian religion. '^ 



THEOPHILUS PARSONS, LL. D., 

Preceded Chief Justice Parker by a few years, 
in this important office. He too graduated at 
Harvard, and studied law with Judge Brad- 
bury, of Falmouth, now Portland, and kept 
the grammar-school. When the town was 
burnt by the British, he returned to his 
father's, and soon opened an oflftce in New- 
bury port. In 1779 he was a member of the 
convention which formed the constitution of 
Massachusetts ; he was also, in 1789, a mem- 
ber of the State convention, which adopted the 
Constitution of the United States. He re- 
moved to Boston in 1800. After an extensive 
practice of thirty-five years, he succeeded Chief 
Justice Dana, in 1806. Not only was he a 
profound lawyer, but an excellent classical 
scholar, and a skilful mathematician. Judge 
Parker, in a sketch given by him of this emi- 
nent jurist, has expressed his opinion, that, 
had he lived in England, he would have been 
made lord chancellor, or lord chief justice. 
He died in 1813, aged sixty-three. 

In reference to the religious character of 
Chief Justice Parsons, I wish to direct special 



136 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

attention to this fact, that with him the pro- 
fession of a belief in Christianity was not the 
effect of some early or casual impulse, which 
led him to adopt the Christian faith without 
investigation ; but was the result of the most 
patient examination of evidence, by a vigor- 
ous, a mature, and a well-disciplined mind. 
It was in quite the latter part of his life, that 
he joined the Church in Boston, of which Dr. 
Kirkland was the pastor. ** I examined,^^ he 
was accustomed to say to his friends, " the 
proof, and weighed the objections to Chris- 
tianity, many years ago, with the accuracy 
of a lawyer ; and the result was so entire a 
conviction of its truth, that I have only to re- 
gret that my belief has not more completely 
influenced my conduct.'^ Two days before his 
death, he repeated his strong conviction to 
Dr. Kirkland in the following terms : " I could 
as soon doubt the existence of God himself, as 
the truth of the Christian religion. ^^ Well 
has it been said, " The judgment of such a 
man ought to be generally know^n.'^ 



JOHN WINTHROP. 137 



CHAPTER V. 

PROFESSOR JOHN WINTHROP — ^FRANCIS BACON — ROBERT BOYLE 

JOHN LOCKE JOSEPH ADDISON DESCARTES REID 

STEWART BROWN COLERIDGE JOSHUA REYNOLDS 

SAMUEL JOHNSON — EDMUND BURKE JAMES NECKAR. 

JOHN WINTHROP. 

In the sketch given of Rittenhouse, it was 
said that " he calculated and observed the 
transit of Venus, a phenomenon which had 
been observed but twice before since the crea- 
tion of the world, and which no one then liv- 
ing could ever witness again.'^ We have since 
seen, that this phenomenon was first calcu- 
lated and observed by J. Horrox, a young 
religious astronomer of England. The subject 
of this sketch was among the few observers 
of the second calculated transit of Venus. And 
in passing, it. is perhaps deserving of remark, 
that of the three persons appointed by the 
American Philosophical Society, to superin- 
tend the observation of the third of these rare 
phenomena two at least were religious, — Rit- 
tenhouse and Rev. Mr. Ewing. Of the char- 
acter of the third. Dr. Owen Biddle, 1 have 
no knowledge. And yet the irreligious would 
have us believe, that philosophy and scepti- 



138 CHRISTIAN BIOaRAPHY. 

cism are synonymous terms ! But to our pro- 
posed sketch. 

John Winthrop, LL.D., F.E. S., HoUis pro- 
fessor of matliematics and natural philosophy 
in Harvard College, was a son of Adam 
Winthrop, a member of the council, and a de- 
scendant of the governor of Massachusetts. 
He was graduated in 1732. In 1738 he w^as 
appointed professor in the place of Mr. Green- 
wood. He immediately entered upon the du- 
ties of this ofBce, and discharged them with 
fidelity and high reputation through life. In 
1761, he sailed to St. Johns, in New-Bruns- 
wick, to observe the transit of Venus over the 
sun^s disc, June 6th, agreeably to the recom- 
mendation of Mr. Hailly. When the day ar- 
rived, he w^as favoured with a fine, clear morn- 
ing, and he enjoyed the inexpressible satis- 
faction of observing a phenomenon which 
had never before been seen, excepting by Mr. 
Horrox, in 1639, by any inhabitant of the 
earth. He died at Cambridge, May 3, 1779. 
aged sixty-four. He was distinguished for his 
very intimate acquaintance with mathemati- 
cal science. His talents for investigating and 
communicating truth were very rare. In the 
variety and extent of his knowledge he has 
seldom been equalled. He had deeply studied 
the policies of different ages ; he had read the 



JOHN WINTHROP. 139 

principal fathers ; and he was thoroughly ac- 
quainted with the controversy between Chris- 
tians and deists. His firm faith in the Chris- 
tian religion was founded upon an accurate 
examination of the evidences of its truth, and 
the virtues of his life added a lustre to his in- 
tellectual powers and his scientific attain- 
ments. In his family he devoutly maintained 
the worship of the Supreme Being ; while he 
himself attended upon the positive institutions 
of the gospel, he could not conceive what rea- 
son any one who called himself a Christian 
could give for neglecting them. The day be- 
fore his death he said : — " The hope that is 
set before us in the New Testament is the 
only thing which will support a man in his 
dying hour. If any man build on any other 
foundation, in my apprehension his founda- 
tion will fail.^' 

Professor Winthrop published several scien- 
tific papers ; and his accurate observations of 
the transit of Mercury in 1740, were honour- 
ably noticed by the Koyal Society of London. 



140 CHRISTIAN BIOGEAPHY. 



FRANCIS BACON. 



Francis Bacon was born January 22, 1561. 
At an early age he gave promise of those 
talents which distinguished him in his more 
mature years, so that he attracted the notice 
of Queen Elizabeth, who familiarly called him 
her young lord keeper. He entered Trinity 
College when he was in his twelfth year ; and 
by the time he was sixteen years old, he had 
made great proficiency in the learning of those 
times, so that he already began to project 
those improvements in science, which paved 
the way for its complete reformation. At the 
age of nineteen, he wrote a work, entitled, 
'* Of the State of Europe,^^ in which he gave 
the most astonishing proofs of the early ma- 
turity of his judgment. Soon after his father's 
death, he commenced the study of the common 
law ; it was, however, impossible that a genius 
that could range through the whole circle of 
the sciences, should confine itself to so dry a 
study. In his moments of leisure, therefore, 
we' find him taking a view of the state of 
learning, and devising means for supplying 
the defects and correcting the errors he had 
detected. A treatise which he published about 
this period, entitled, " The Greatest Birth of 



FRANCIS BACON. 141 

Time/' but which is now lost, appears to have 
exhibited the groundwork of that splendid 
design, which was afterwards disclosed more 
fully in his " Grand Instauration of the Sci- 
ences/' In 1603, he was chosen a member of 
parliament ; and in July of the same year re- 
ceived the honour of knighthood. The next 
year, he was made one of his majesty's coun- 
cil. In 1605, he published a work on " The 
Proficiency and Advancement of Learning," 
first in English and afterwards in Latin, 
which gained him much celebrity. In 1607, 
Sir Francis was appointed solicitor-general, 
after which his practice increased so much, 
that he was retained in almost all great causes. 
In 1610, appeared his book '' On the Wisdom 
of the Ancients," in which is exhibited great 
depth and variety of knowledge. In 1611, he 
was made a j udge of the Marshal's Court, and 
two years after, he succeeded Sir Henry Ho- 
bart as attorney-general. While in this office, 
he exerted himself much to put a stop to the 
pernicious practice of duelling ; and his elo- 
quent and learned charge on this subject, in 
the Star-Chamber, so pleased the lords of the 
council, who were present, that they ordered 
it to be printed and published with the decree 
of the court. In 1617, Sir Francis succeeded 
Chancellor Egerton, with the title of lord 



142 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

keeper ; and soon after, the king going on a 
visit to^ Scotland, lie was intrusted with the 
conduct of public affairs in his absence, and 
presided at the council. In the beginning of 
1619, he was made lord high chancellor of 
England, had the title of Baron Verulam con- 
ferred upon him, and shortly after, the dig- 
nity of Viscount St. Albans. 

Amidst the multiplicity and variety of en- 
gagements, in which his high station involved 
him, he still found time for his. favourite study 
of philosophy. In 1620, he published his 
most finished performance, under the title of 
'' Novum Organum Scientiarum,^^ which form- 
ed the sequel to his " Grand Instauration of 
the SeiencesJ^ This work was highly appre- 
ciated by the learned men of his time, who 
regarded it as a standard of true philosophi- 
cal inquiry ; and later times have not been 
unjust to his memory, in styling him, " The 
Father of the Inductive Philosophy.^^ 

After this, he became unfortunate and re- 
tired to private life. During this period, he 
wrote his " History of Henry VII. f^ "• Essays, 
or, Counsels Civil and Moral ;'' and the " Third, 
Fourth, and Fifth parts of the Grand Instau- 
ration of the Sciences,'^ by which last work in 
particular he enlarged the boundaries of hu- 
man science beyond all who had gone before 



FRANCIS BACON. 143 

him, uri both individuals and learned societies 
of all the most civilized nations of Europe 
have freely acknowledged. 

After mentioning his death, which occurred 
on the 9th of April, 1626, the biographical 
sketch, of which the foregoing is little more 
than an abridgment, says : " Thus died Lord 
Bacon, of whom it is little to say, that he was 
one of the greatest philosophers of modern 
times. To him belongs the praise of striking- 
out a new path to science, and rescuing it 
from the load of metaphysical jargon which 
had overwhelmed and nearly extinguished it. 
Goethe says, ' He drew a sponge over the table 
of human knowledge.' His contemporaries 
could not fully appreciate the extent of his 
genius, and the value of his labours. Sensi- 
ble of this himself, he says in his will : ' My 
name and memory I bequeath to foreign na- 
tions and to my own countrymen after some 
time be passed over I' With regard to phy- 
sics, if the learned of our times have made 
more brilliant discoveries, few will deny that 
it was Bacon who led the way to those dis- 
coveries, and laid the foundation of the sci- 
ences in the most solid and decisive experi- 
ments.'^ 

In the Spectator, (No. 554,) I find the fol- 
lowing just tribute to the memory of this 



144 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

great philosopher : — " One of the most exten- 
sive and improved geniuses we have had any 
instance of in our own nation, or in any other, 
was that of Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. 
This great man, by an extraordinary force of 
nature, compass of thought, and indefatigable 
study, had amassed to himself such stores of 
knowledge as we cannot look upon without 
amazement. His capacity seemed to have 
grasped all that was revealed in books before 
his time ; and, not satisfied with that, he be- 
gan to strike out new tracks of science, too 
many to be travelled over by any one man in 
the compass of the longest life. These, there- 
fore, he could only mark down, like imperfect 
coastings on maps, or supposed points of land, 
to be faster discovered and ascertained by the 
industry of after ages, who should proceed 
upon his notices or conjectures.'^ 

In the Tattler, (No. 267,) I also find drawn 
a fine character of this extraordinary man : — 
" Sir Francis Bacon was a man who, for great- 
ness of genius and compass of knowledge, did 
honour to his age and country, I could almost 
say, to human nature itself. He possessed at 
once all those extraordinary talents which 
were divided among the greatest authors of 
antiquity. He had the sound, distinct, com- 
prehensive knowledge of Aristotle, with the 



FRANCIS BACON. 145 

beautiful lights, graces, and embellishments 
of Cicero. One does not know which to ad- 
mire most in his writings, the strength of 
reason, force of style, or brightness of imagi- 
nation.'^ 

Lord Bacon was a serious believer in Chris- 
tianity. This might be inferred from a pas- 
sage in his Essays, (No. 16,) " A little philo- 
sophy inclineth men's minds to atheism, but 
depths in philosophy bring men's minds about 
to religion !" This remark of one of the 
greatest of men, which is equally applicable to 
every species of infidelity as to atheism, is 
specially commended to the consideration of 
the reader. 

His piety becomes more apparent in a 
prayer found among his papers written by his 
own hand. The following short extracts must 
suffice : — 

" Kemember, O Lord, how thy servant has 
walked before thee ; remember what I have 
first sought, and what has been principal in 
my intentions. I have loved thj^ assemblies; 
I have mourned for the divisions of thy Church ; 
I have delighted in the brightness of thy 
sanctuary ; I have ever prayed unto thee, that 
the vine which thy riglit hand hath planted in 
this nation might have the former and tlie 
latter rain, and that it might stretch its 



146 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

branches to the seas and to the floods. If any 
have been my enemies, I thought not of them, 
neither has the sun gone down upon my dis- 
pleasure. Thy creatures have been my books, 
but thy Scriptures much more so. I have 
sought thee in the courts, the fields, and the 
gardens ; but I have found thee in thy 
temples. 

" Thousands have been my sins, and ten 
thousand my transgressions ; but thy sanctifi- 
cations have remained with me, and my heart, 
through thy grace, hath been an unquenched 
coal upon thine altar. 

'* O Lord, my strength ! I have, from my 
youth, met with thee in all my ways — in thy 
fatherly compassions, in thy merciful chastise- 
ments, and in thy most visible providences. 
Just are thy judgments upon me for my sins, 
which are more in number than the sands of 
the sea, but which have no proportion to thy 
mercies. Be merciful unto me, O Lord, for 
my Saviour's sake, and receive me into thy 
bosom or guide me in thy ways.'' 

The retirement of Lord Bacon was much 
spent in studying the great truths of religion, 
and his strongest consolations in adversity 
seem to have been drawn from this divine 
source. 



ROBERT BOYLE. 147 



ROBERT BOYLE. 



The article of the Spectator, from whicli a 
quotation was made in my last sketcli, after 
alluding to Lord Bacon, says : ** The excellent 
Mr. Boyle was the person who seems to ha^'e 
been designed by nature to succeed to the 
labours and inquiries of that extraordinary 
genius I have just mentioned. By innumera- 
ble experiments he in a great measure filled 
up those plans and outlines of science which 
his predecessor had sketched out. His life was 
spent in the pursuit of nature through a great 
variety of forms and changes, and in the most 
rational as well as devout adoration of its 
divine Author.'' 

Eobert Boyle was born at Lismore, in Ire- 
land, Jan. 26, 1626, the year that Bacon died. 
In early life he prosecuted his studies with 
great success, first at Eaton, under private 
tutors, arnd lastly at Geneva. After having 
travelled over various parts of the continent 
he settled in England, and devoted himself to 
science, especially to natural philosophy and 
to chemistry; and to the close of liis existence 
he unremittingly persevered in his scientific 
pursuits. 

It is unnecessary to ])artiriiln]'ize liis at- 



148 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

tainments. As a philosopher, he is admitted 
on all hands to rank with Bacon and with 
Newton. The learned Boerhaave, who cannot 
be accused of adulation or of partiality, says : 
" Boyle, the ornament of his age and country, 
succeeded to the genius and inquiries of the 
great Verulam. Which of all Boyle's writings 
shall I recommend ? All of them ; to him we 
owe the secrets of fire, air, water, animals, 
vegetables, fossils, so .that from his works may 
be deduced the whole system of natural know- 
ledge.'^ 

His knowledge and the extent of his re- 
searches were scarcely equalled but by his 
modesty. He was one of the first who laid 
the foundation of the Royal Society, yet re- 
fused the presidency when offered to him. 
He likewise modestly declined the provostship 
of Eaton, w^hich Charles H., unasked, bestowed 
on him as the reward of his splendid talents. 
The honour of a peerage he also declined. In 
this trait of character how does he resemble 
the great of every age ! Witness Socrates, and 
Sir William Jones, and Newton, and Davy, as 
also our own Eittenhouse and the late lamented 
Bowditch. 

Boyle was a consistent and unwavering 
Christian. '' Deists,'' says he, *' must, to main- 
tain their negative creed, swallow greater im- 



ROBERT BOYLE. 149 

probabilities than Christians, to maintain the 
positive creed of the apostles. And they must 
think it fitter to believe that chance, or na- 
ture, or superstition, should perform wonder- 
ful and hardly-credible things than that the 
great Author of nature, God, should be able 
to do so.'' He speaks of the Bible as a 
** matchless volume," and says, " It is impossi- 
ble we can study it too much or esteem it too 
highly." 

His piety was so conspicuous as to attract 
the special attention of the king, and of the 
two great ministers of state, Southampton and 
Clarendon, by the latter of whom he was so- 
licited to take on himself the duties of a 
clergyman. This, after mature deliberation, 
he declined, mainly, as we are told by Bishop 
Burnet, because he " did not feel within him- 
self any motion or tendency of mind, which 
he could safely esteem a call from the Holy 
Spirit, and therefore he did not venture to 
take holy orders, lest he should be found to 
have lied unto it." 

" His knowledge," says Bishop Burnet, 
" was of so vast an extent, that if it were not 
for the variety of the vouches in their several 
sorts, I should be afraid to say all I know. 
He carried the study of the Hebrew very far 
into the rabbinical writings, and the other 



150 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

oriental tongues. He had read so much of 
the fathers that he had formed a clear judg- 
ment of all the eminent ones ; he had read a 
vast deal on the Scriptures, had gone very 
nicely through the various controversies in re- 
ligion, and was a true master of the whole 
body of divinity ; he entertained so profound 
a veneration for the Deity that the very name 
of God was never mentioned by him without 
a pause and an observable stop in his dis- 
course.'*" To those who conversed most with 
him, in his inquiries into nature^ it was obvi- 
ous that it was his leading object, in that, on 
which as he had his own eye constantly fixed, 
so he took care to put others often in mind of 
it, viz., to raise in himself and others more 
exalted thoughts of the greatness, and glory, 
and wisdom, and goodness of the Deity. Such 
was the impression of this upon his own mind 
that he concludes the article of his will, which 
has a reference to the Eoyal Society, in these 
words : " Wishing them also a happy success 
in their laudable attempts to discover the true 
nature of the works of God, and praying that 
they, and other researchers into physical 
truths, may cordially refer their attainments 
to the glory of the great Author of nature, and 
to the comfort of mankind. ^^ 

^ The same thing is remarked of Sir Isaac Newton. 



JOHN LOCKE. 151 

So brightly did the example of this great 
and good man shine through his whole course, 
that Bishop Burnet, on reviewing it, in a mo- 
ment of pious exultation thus expressed him- 
self: ''I might challenge the whole tribe of 
libertines to come and view the usefulness as 
well as the excellence of the Christian religion, 
in a life that was entirely dedicated to it." 



JOHN LOCKE. 

John Locke was born in 1632, at Wington, 
near Bristol, England. He is usually es- 
teemed as one of the most illustrious philoso- 
phers and one of the greatest men that Eng- 
land ever produced. We are told that, " with 
judicious taste and becoming simplicity. Queen 
Caroline erected in her pavilion at Eichmond 
his bust, with those of Bacon, Newton, and 
Clarke,* as the four principal philosophers of 
which England may boast with real pride and 
satisfaction when she enumerates her departed 
heroes.'' It seems unnecessary to refer to his 
public life, as his name is so well known. 
His " Essay concerning Human Understand- 
ing,'' his " Discourses on Government," and 

"' Samuel Clarke, D. D., whose name was associated 
with Newton and Leibnitz while living. His clerical 
title excludes him from a notice in these sketches. 



Jc 



152 CHKISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

his '' Letters on Toleration/^ are the works for 
which he is most unusually distinguished. 

Locke was a practical man. He always 
kept the useful in his eye, and esteemed the 
employments of men only in proportion to the 
good they are capable of producing. This ex- 
tended even to the pursuits of criticism and 
other departments of literature. This gene- 
ral trait of character is illustrated by the fol- 
lowing anecdote : — 

" Mr. Locke being invited by a certain noble- 
man to meet some of the most celebrated wits 
and scholars of the age, went in great expecta- 
tion of enjoying a high intellectual repast. 
The card-table being introduced after dinner, 
contrary to his expectation, he retired pensive 
and chagrined to the window. Inquiry being 
made if he was well, he replied, * he had come 
to give the company meeting in full confi- 
dence of receiving an uncommon degree of 
satisfaction in the conversation of such cele- 
brated characters, and he must acknowledge 
he felt himself hurt at the disappointment.^ 
The card-table was immediately withdrawn, 
and a rich flow of souls began, to his no small 
gratification.^^ 

His belief in the Christian religion, and his 
regard for its sacred truths, he exhibited in 
various ways. Among his earlier works is 



JOHN LOCKE. 153 

found one entitled, "• Keasonableness of Chris- 
tianity/^ and in tlie latter part of liis life he 
wrote a judicious commentary on several of 
the epistles of St. Paul. He everywhere re- 
fers to the sacred writings with the greatest 
reverence, and exhorts Christians *Ho betake 
themselves in earnest to the study of the way 
of salvation, in those holy writings, wherein 
God has revealed it from heaven and proposed 
it to the world, seeking our religion where we 
are sure it is in truth to be found, comparing 
spiritual things with spiritual.'' In answer to 
the question propounded to him, " What is the 
shortest and surest way for a young man to 
attain the true knowledge of the Christian re- 
ligion?'' he says, "Let him study the Holy 
Scriptures, especially the New Testament. 
Therein are contained the words of eternal life. 
It has God for its author, salvation for its end, 
and truth, without any mixture of error, for 
its matter." < 

The pious consolation which the Christian 
receives from a trust in God, and in the reve- 
lation which he has seen fit to give to man, it 
seems to me could not be more forcibly ex- 
pressed in the same number of words, than in 
the following simple declaration of his: "I 
gratefully receive and rejoice in the light of 
revelation, whicli has set me at rest in many 



154 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

things, the manner whereof my poor reason 
can by no means make out to me.'' Thus we 
see even sage and hoary-headed philosophy 
listening to the teaching of revelation, with 
the intent and ear of childhood to the voice of 
maternal instruction. 

Lady Masham, a lady of superior intelli- 
gence and virtue, and in whose society this il- 
lustrious man passed the last years of his life, 
gives the following account of the manner in 
which he died : — 

" You will not, perhaps, dislike to know, 
that the last scene of Mr. Locke's life was not 
less admirable than anything else concerning 
him. All the faculties of his mind were per- 
fect to the last. His weakness, of which alone 
he died, made such gradual and visible ad- 
vances, that few people, I think, do so sensibly 
see death approach them as he did. During 
all this time no one could observe the least 
alteration in his humour ; always cheerful, 
conversable, civil, to the last day thoughtful 
of all the concerns of his friends and omitting 
no fit occasion of giving Christian advice to 
all about him. In short, his death was like 
his life — truly pious, yet natural, easy, and un- 
affected. Time, I think, can never produce a 
more eminent example of reason and religion 
than he was, both living and dying. 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 155 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 

Joseph Addison was born May 1, 1672. He 
formed an acquaintance with Mr., afterwards 
Sir Eichard Steele, in early life, with whom he 
was subsequently so intimately associated. 
At the age of fifteen he was entered at Queen's 
College, Oxford, where he soon became dis- 
tinguished for the ardour with which he culti- 
vated classical literature, and for his skill in 
Latin poetry. He early began to distinguish 
himself as an author, and was highly respected 
by many of the greatest and the most learned 
of his contemporaries. 

In 1695 he addressed a complimentary 
poem, on one of the campaigns of King Wil- 
liam, to the lord keeper Somers ; and in 1701 
he wrote his epistolary poem from Italy, ad- 
dressed to Lord Halifax, Avhich is esteemed by 
many the most elegant and finished of his 
poetical productions. On his return home, he 
published his travels, which he dedicated to 
Lord Somers. After some reverses attendant 
on the death of King William, Lord Godolphin 
applying to Lord Halifax to recommend him a 
poet capable of celebrating the recent splendid 
victory of the Duke of Marlborough at Blen- 
heim, the latter named Mr. Addison, who pro- 



156 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

duced his celebrated poem, ^' The Campaign/' 
for which he was rewarded with the place of 
commissioner of appeals, in which he succeeded 
Mr. Locke. In the year 1706 he was made 
secretary of state. These employments, how- 
ever, did not engross him from the pursuits of 
literature. He assisted Steele, in the Tattler, 
Spectator, and Guardian, in the course of which 
appeared the series of papers afterwards col- 
lected, and subsequently often reprinted, under 
the title of " Addison's Evidences of the Chris- 
tian Religion. '^ In his latter years he pro- 
jected a paraphrastical version of the Psalms 
of David, of which he gave a beautiful speci- 
men in his metrical translation of Psalm xxiii: 
" The Lord my pasture shall prepare,'' &c. 
But a long and painful illness prevented the 
completion of this pious design; and it is to 
be regretted, as the few compositions of this 
kind which he has left us exhibit proofs of 
his piety, and his competency for the under- 
taking. 

Dr. Johnson, in delineating his character as 
a writer, gives the following amiable picture 
of him : — 

'' He employed wit on the side of virtue and 
religion. He not only made the proper use of 
wit himself, but taught it to others ; and from 
his time it has been generally subservient to 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 157 

the cause of reason and truth. He has dissi- 
pated the prejudice that had long connected 
cheerfulness with vice, and easiness of man- 
ners with laxity of principles. He has re- 
stored virtue to its dignity, and taught inno- 
cence not to be ashamed. This is an elevation 
of literary character, above all Greek, above 
all Eoman fame. As a teacher of wisdom, he 
may be confidently followed. His religion 
has nothing in it enthusiastic, or supersti- 
tious ; he appears neither weakly, credulous, 
nor wantonly sceptical ; his morality is neither 
dangerously lax, nor impracticably rigid. All 
the enchantments of fancy, and all the co- 
gency of argument, are employed to recom- 
mend to the reader his real interest, the care 
of pleasing the Author of his being.'' 

Mr. Addison, a man of most exquisite taste, 
was a great admirer of the Scriptures. '' Af- 
ter perusing the book of Psalms,'' says he, 
** let a judge of the beauties of poetry read a 
literal translation of Horace or Pindar, and 
he will find in these two last such an absur- 
dity and confusion of style, with such a com- 
parative poverty of imagination, as will make 
him sensible of the vast superiority of Scrip- 
ture style." 

As he drew near to the close of life, he was 
sustained by the Cliristian's joys and by the 



168 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

Christian's hopes. His future existence he 
contemplated with delight. In his earlier and 
more prosperous days, he had said in regard 
to the immortality of the soul : — " If it is a 
dream let me enjoy it ; since it makes me both 
the happier and the better man.'' Now that 
this scene approaches nearer, he says : " The 
prospects of a future state is the secret com- 
fort and refreshment of my soul. It is that 
which makes nature look cheerful about me ; 
it doubles all my pleasures, and supports me 
under all my afflictions. I can look at disap- 
pointments and misfortunes, pain and sick- 
ness, death itself, with indifference, so long as 
I keep in view the pleasures of eternity, and 
the state of being in which there will be no 
fears nor apprehensions, pains nor sorrows." 

Just before his departure, having sent for a 
young nobleman nearly related to him, who 
requested to know his dying commands,- — his 
answer was : — " See in what peace a Christian 
can die." 

GENERAL REMARKS. 

In looking over a biographical sketch of Sir 
Isaac Newton, I find the following brief re- 
^ marks : — " How great and satisfactory a con- 
firmation is it to the sincere, humble Chris- 
tian, and what an unsurmountable barrier 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 159 

does it present to the infidel, to perceive in 
the list of Christian believers, the exalted and 
venerable names of Bacon, Boyle, Locke, New- 
ton, Addison, and Lyttleton ! — men who must 
be acknowledged to be ornaments of human 
nature, when we consider the wide compass of 
their abilities, the great extent of their learn- 
ing and knowledge, and the piety, integrity, 
and beneficence of their lives. These eminent 
characters firmly adhered to the belief of 
Christianity, after the most diligent and ex- 
act researches into the life of its Founder, 
the authenticity of its records, the completion 
of its prophecies, the sublimity of its doc- 
trines, the purity of its precepts, and the argu- 
ments of its adversaries/^ 

These sketches were first intended mainly 
for the young, who, whatever else they may 
have learned, may not have learned that the 
most eminent men of modern times have been 
the devoted advocates of Christianity. This 
the writer of these sketches did not early learn 
— his attention was not early directed to this 
subject. But here another direction is given 
to this subject. We are told, that Christian 
biography may serve as a confirmation of the 
faith even of " the sincere and humble Qliris- 
tian,^^ To thousands who are destined, in the 
order of Providence, to move in tlie lower 



-^- 



160 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

walks of life, and perliaps to see pride and 
vice triumpliant, while virtue and unassum- 
ing worth pine in lonely and perhaps starv- 
ing solitude, — "to thousands of such, I say, the 
question must • have presented itself, — "If 
Christianity is true, Avhy are not those who 
take the lead in society its advocates T^ Such 
questions, how natural: "Have any of the 
rulers or the Pharisees believed on him ?'^ But 
not such is the language of the prophet : — 
" Therefore, I say surely these are poor ; they 
are foolish : for they know not the way of the 
Lord, nor the judgment of their God. I will 
get me unto the great men, and will speak 
unto them : for they have known the way of 
the Lord, and the judgment of their God.'^ 
But to such as propose this question, these 
sketches say : — " Those who take the lead in 
most of the lower circles of society are either 
those whom the world loves more because the 
world loves its own, and not because of the pos- 
session of any learning, talent, or real worth, 
— or who have devoted their conscience upon 
the altar of their ambition, and having intel- 
lect enough to learn the truth, still love dark- 
ness rather than light beeause their deeds are 
eviV^ And these sketches further say to such 
inquirers : — " Look beyond the narrow circle 
of your own neighbourhood or town, — look 



JOSEPH ADDISON. Ifil 

out upon those who have taken the lead in 
carrying on all the most important enterprises 
of the world, and whose names stand as bea- 
con-lights along the path of science — shining 
brighter and brighter with the lapse of years ; 
and when you contemplate such a one, there 
you will find a Christian,^ ^ 

Let the young man, or even the old man, 
who has not had the means of pushing his in- 
quiries among the speculative objections to 
Christianity, or among the speculative evi- 
dences by which it is supported, remember 
this, that no objection has ever been urged, 
which has not been reviewed and fully con- 
futed by the researches of the wonderful men 
whose names have been presented in these 
sketches. To him who should say, there have 
been infidels and unbelievers, as well as Chris- 
tians, of distinguished intellect, I need only 
answer: It requires neither research, moral 
candour, nor a virtuous life, to be an unbeliever 
or an infidel ; for a thinking man to be a 
Christian, it requires them all. Newton used 
to check and silence the infidel, Dr. Halley, 
when he ventured to sppak anything in his 
presence disrespectful to religion, by the re- 
inark : " Z have studied these things — you have 
T^oty If we add to this, that Newtoi;i, in order 
to be a Christian, had to combine with his re- 



162 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

search, moral candour and a virtuous life — 
both of which are opposed to the natural heart, 
which is enmity against God, — to the honest 
inquirer after truth, his opinions of the Chris- 
tian religion would outweigh those of an hun- 
dred dissolute philosophers, though eminent 
and honoured as was his friend Halley. 



On recurring to the sketch of Mr. Locke, the 
inquiry naturally arises, whether he stands 
alone as a Christian among the distinguished 
metaphysicians? — and the question assumes 
a peculiar interest, when we learn that it is 
the express office of these men ** to detect the 
errors of thinking, by going back to the foun- 
tains of thought ; and to direct into the proper 
track of reasoning the devious mind of man, 
by showing him its whole process from the 
first perceptions of sense to the last conclusion 
of ratiocination;'^ and that it is from the 
principles laid down by these men, that all 
the practical rules for the conduct of the 
human judgment are drawn. Locke stands 
not alone. 



THOMAS REID. 163 



DESCARTES 



Has been justly styled the father of mo- 
dern philosophy, and has given it its name. 
Even Cousin says, the Cartesian method has 
become the only legitimate method of modern 
philosophy. He flourished about the begin- 
ning of the sixteenth century — an age of com- 
parative moral darkness. His philosophy, 
however, was deeply imbued with theology. 
He taught, as among the elements of philoso- 
phic investigation, these fundamental truths, 
— that there is a God, that he is the author 
of nature, and that the soul is immaterial 
and immortal. While I have no evidence of 
his practical piety, I believe no part of his 
system has ever been charged with savouring 
of infidelity. 



THOMAS REID, D. D., F.R.S., 

Professor of moral philosophy in the Uni- 
versity of Glasgow, was a metaphysician of 
great discrimination and of great merit. " His 
opinions of the most important subjects,'' says 
Mr. Stewart, who has given to the world an 
account of his life and writings, '^ arc to be 
found in his works, and tliat spirit of piety 



164 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

which animated every part of his conduct 
forms the best comment on their practical 
tendency/^ 



DUGALD STEWART, 

A MAN of wonderful powers of mind, and of 
most singular excellence of character, was a 
Christian. At the age of nineteen, he was a 
teacher of mathematics in the University of 
Edinburgh. At the age of twenty-five, he 
superadded to the duties of his department, 
and that while delivering to his classes for 
the first time a course of lectures on astro- 
nomy, the temporary charge of the depart- 
ment of moral philosophy, which required of 
him a daily lecture of an hour in length, for 
five or six successive months. These lectures, 
though commenced with only four days' notice, 
and on a new and abstruse subject, and while 
he was in the full discharge of the arduous 
duties of the mathematical chair, were de- 
livered with an eloquence and felicity of illus- 
tration rarely equalled in the lecture room. 
At the age of thirty-two, he succeeded Dr. 
Ferguson, as professor of moral philosophy. 
" So extensive,'' says a biographer, " was his 
acquaintance with almost every department 
of literature, find so readily did he arrange 



DUGALD STEWART. 165 

his ideas on any subject, with a view to their 
communication to others, that his colleagues 
frequently, in the event of illness or absence, 
availed themselves of his assistance in the in- 
struction of their classes. In addition to his 
own academical duties, he repeatedly supplied 
the place of Dr. John Kobinson, professor of 
natural philosophy. He taught, for several 
months during one winter, the Greek classes 
for the late Mr. Dalzel ; he more than one 
season taught the mathematical classes for 
the late Mr. Playfair ; he delivered some lec- 
tures on logic during an illness of Dr. Finlay- 
son ; and he, one . winter, lectured for some 
time on belles lettres for the successor of Dr. 
Blair. A man of such learning and of such 
powers could not fail to exert a great influ- 
ence; but this influence was all thrown into 
the scale of Christianity. His writings are 
among the standard works of metaphysical 
science. He died 1828, aged seventy-four 
years. 



166 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



THOMAS BROWN, M.D., 



Author of the " Lectures on the Philosophy 
of the Human Mind/^ distinguished as an ana- 
lytical philosopher, was a Christian. I find 
the following short notice of him in the En- 
cyclopaedia of Eeligious Knowledge : — 

" Dr. Thomas Brown, a man eminent as a 
metaphysician, moral philosopher, and poet, 
was born at Kirkmabreck, in Scotland, in 
1777, and displayed an early acuteness and 
thirst for knowledge. His first education was 
received in the vicinity of London, and was 
completed at the University of Edinburgh. 
At the age of twenty, he wrote a masterly an- 
swer to Darwin's Zoonomia. In 1810 he suc- 
ceeded Mr. Stewart at Edinburgh, as profes- 
sor of moral philosophy, and soon gained 
universal admiration as a lecturer, by his elo- 
quence and talents, and affection by his kind- 
ness to the students. Dr. Brown was a pro- 
fessed believer in Christianity ; and though 
he too seldom adverts to the Bible in his phi- 
losophical lectures, yet his system of meta- 
physics and morals approaches nearer to the 
simplicity and purity of the sacred volume, 
than that of many professed expounders of it. 
He has thrown more light on the essential dis- 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 167 

tinction between the mind and the body, and 
on the mental emotions and associations, than 
perhaps any preceding writer. His brilliant 
career was unfortunately cut short by con- 
sumption, on the 2d of April, 1820." 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 

Distinguished as a metaphysician, not less 
than as a poet, was a Christian. Witness his 
" Friend," " Aids to Keflection," and " States- 
man's Manual," works which display genius 
of the highest order devoted to the service of 
Christianity. 

But these afford not the evidence of his 
Christian character. In the closing scenes 
of his life were exhibited the true spirit of a 
philosopher, and the hopes and triumphs of 
a Christian. His worldly affairs had been 
long settled, and after many tender adieus, he 
expressed a wish that he might be as little 
interrupted as possible. His sufferings were 
severe and constant till within thirty-six hours 
of his end ; but they had no power to affect 
the deep tranquillitiy of his mind or the wont- 
ed sweetness of his address. His prayer from 
the beginning was, that God would not with- 
draw his Spirit ; and that by the way in wliich 
he should bear the last struggle, he might be 



168 CHRISTIAN BIOGKAPHY. 

able to evince the sincerity of his faith in 
Christ.'/ His prayer was answered, and " be 
sleeps in Jesus/' 



In the three preceding articles I have pre- 
sented some of the most distinguished names 
connected with the history of a particular 
science ; and we have seen that they were 
Christians. I know not a useful science, the 
results of the investigation of which would 
not be the same. Yet that system of arrang- 
ing the subjects of ftiese sketches is not per- 
haps the best to follow. At any rate, we turn 
aside from this course for a short time to ex- 
amine a small group which constituted a bril- 
liant constellation in the literary heavens of 
Europe near the close of the last century. 



JOSHUA REYNOLDS 

Was born July 16, 1723, at Plympton, Devon- 
shire, England. He had very early a strong 
partiality for drawing and painting, and after 
being graduated at Oxford vvas placed under 
the care of the artist Hudson. About 1749 
he travelled into Italy, where he improved him- 
self in the Italian school of arts, and chastened 



JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 169 

his taste by the study of the best productions 
of Roman genius. His fame as a portrait and 
historical painter is well known. When the 
Eoyal Academy was instituted, in 1768, he 
was unanimously chosen president, and Avas 
knighted. In 1783 he was appointed principal 
painter to the king. 

Sir Joshua was not less distinguished as a 
literary character. He was the active pro- 
moter of a literary association which was 
formed in 1764, and which numbered among 
its illustrious members the names of Johnson, 
Burke, Garrick, Douglas, Goldsmith, the 
Whartons, &c. His literary works, the princi- 
pal of which are the masterly discourses de- 
livered to the Academy, form three volumes. 
In these discourses he displayed not only great 
taste and a perfect acquaintance w^ith his pro- 
fession, but strong powers of language, sound 
judgment, an elegant style, and luminous 
order. His merits did not pass unrewarded. 
He was created doctor of laws by the universi- 
ties of Dublin and Oxford, and was honoured 
with the friendships of the greatest men of 
the age, at home and abroad. He resigned 
the chair of president of the Eoyal Academy, 
and died 23d Feb., 1792, aged sixty-nine. 
His remains were deposited in St. PauFs Ca- 
thedral, and while his obsequies were graced 



170 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

with the attendance of men of rank, of genius, 
and learning, the shops through the streets 
were shut up, so that the funeral of a private 
man engaged the attention of the public, and 
for a while suspended the busy concerns of the 
first commercial city in the world. 

Sir Joshua was a Christian, and his last ill- 
ness was cheered by the spirit of resignation 
and immortal hope. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 

Was born at Lichfield in Staffordshire, Eng- 
land, on the 7th of September, 1709, of ob- 
scure parents, his father being a small book- 
seller, and being destitute of the means for 
educating his son. Under the patronage of a 
gentleman by the name of Corbet he was 
entered at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1728, 
being then in his nineteenth year. His pecu- 
niary resources being cut off, he left Oxford, 
after a residence of three years, without taking 
a degree. He soon commenced writing for the 
public, and among his earlier prose productions 
are the lives of many distinguished men ; and 
Bos well refers to him as one '' who excelled all 
mankind in writing the lives of others. ^^ In 
1747, he published the plan of his great Eng- 
lish Dictionary, and the work itself appeared 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 171 

in 1755. Meantime the Kambler, a semi- 
weekly periodical, written wholly by himself, 
and extending through two years, had been 
published. This consisted of a series of moral 
and religious essays. 

By this time Johnson had acquired a great 
reputation, and the foundation of his future 
fame was firmly established. In 1755, he re- 
ceived the degree of A. M. from the University 
of Oxford ; in 1762, as a mark of his great 
literary distinction, there was granted him a 
pension from the government of X300 per 
annum, and in 1765 he received the degree of 
LL. D. from Trinity College, Dublin. The 
same honour was subsequently, in 1775, con- 
ferred by the University of Oxford. A list of 
his prose works, as given by Mr. Boswell, fills 
more than five pages 8vo. 

In regard to his religious character it may 
be premised that he was early devoted to God 
by his parents, being baptized on the day of 
his birth. Of his religious experience he gives 
the following account : — 

" I fell into an inattention to religion or an 
indifference about it in my ninth ye^r. The 
church at Lichfield, in which we had a seat, 
wanted reparation, so I was to go* and find a 
seat in other churches ; and having bad eyes 
and being awakened about this, I used to go 



172 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

and read in the fields on Sunday. This habit 
continued till my fourteenth year, when I be- 
came a sort of lax talker against religion, for 
I did not much think against it. And this 
lasted till I went to Oxford, where it would 
not be suffered. When at Oxford I took up 
* Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life,' expecting 
to find it a dull book, (as such books generally 
are,) and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found 
Law quite an overmatch for me ; and this was 
the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of 
religion after I became capable of rational in- 
quiry.'' 

" From this time," says his biographer, " re- 
ligion was the predominant object of his 
thoughts, though, with the just sentiments of 
a conscientious Christian, he lamented that 
his practice of its duties fell far short of what 
it ought to be." 

To " Law's Serious Call" he always alluded 
with great respect, and even pronounced it 
" the finest piece of hortatory theology in any 
language.'' It may not be amiss in passing 
to notice, that this book has called forth no 
common^praise even from the sceptical Gibbon. 
" Mr. Law's master-work, the ' Serious Call,^ " 
says he, '' is still read as a popular and powerful 
book of devotion. His precepts are rigid, but 
they are founded on the gospel ; his satire is 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 173 

sharp, but it is drawn from the knowledge of 
human life ; and many of his portraits are not 
unwortliy of the pen of La Bruyere. If he 
finds a spark of piety in his reader's mind, he 
will soon kindle it to a flame ; and a philoso- 
pher must allow, that he exposes, with equal 
severity and truth, the strange contradiction 
between the faith and practice of the Christian 
world/' 

The remark of Dr. Johnson's biographer, 
that from the time of his conversion at Ox- 
ford, religion was the predominant object of his 
thoughts, might be illustrated by numerous 
quotations from his writings. The following 
is found in his diary, on his twenty-seventh 
birth-day .—" Sept. 7, 1736. I have this day 
entered upon my twenty-eighth year. Mayest 
thou, God, enable me, for Jesus Christ's sake, 
to spend this in such a manner that I may re- 
ceive comfort from it at the hour of death, and 
in the day of judgment ! Amen." And on 
entering upon the publication of his Eambler, 
before referred to, he composed and offered up 
the following prayer, such were the devout and 
conscientious sentiments with which this paper 
was undertaken : " Almighty God, the giver 
of all good things, without whose help all 
labour is ineffectual, and without whose grace 
all wisdom is folly, grant, I beseech thee, that 



174 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

in this undertaking thy Holy Spirit may not 
be withheld from me, but that I may pro- 
mote thy glory, and the salvation of myself 
and others ; grant this, O Lord, for the sake 
of thy Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.^^ Among 
his writings are some professedly religious. 
One work is entitled " On Vicarious Punish- 
ments, and the Great Propitiation for the sins 
of the world by Jesus Christ.^^ Another con- 
sists entirely of " Prayers and Meditations.^^ 

Dr. Johnson inherited a strong predisposi- 
tion to morbid melancholy, which exhibited 
itself during his whole life, among other ways, 
in a great and unconquerable dread of death. 
He once said, " I never had a moment in which 
death was not terrible to me. When, how- 
ever, this great man actually approached dis- 
solution " all his fears were calmed and ab- 
solved by the prevalence of his faith, and his 
trust in the merits and propitiation of Jesus 
Christ.^^ He was full of resignation, strong 
in faith, joyful in hope of his own salvation, 
and anxious for the salvation of his friends. 
" God bless you, my dear,'^ — addressed to a 
young lady, the daughter of a particular 
friend — were the last words he was heard to 
speak. 



EDMUND BURKE. 175 



EDMUND BURKE. 

Of the general character of the subject of this 
sketch, whose name fills so large a space both 
in the political and literary annals of Great 
Britain, little need be said. He was born at 
Dublin, Jan. 1, 1730, and died July 8, 1797. 
In his political career, he was a member of 
parliament, pay-master general, and a mem- 
ber of the council. He made a strenuous and 
eloquent resistance to the impolitic contest 
with America ; and his Reflections on the 
French Revolution, published in 1790, ex- 
hibited his foresight of the result, and his 
hostility to the doctrines of that infatuated 
nation. His compositions have been collected 
in sixteen volumes 8vo. 

The following tribute is from the Encyclo- 
paedia of Eeligious Knowledge : — 

" In private life Burke was amiable and be- 
nevolent ; in public, indefatigable, ardent, and 
abhorrent of meanness and injustice. It was 
this latter quality which rendered him a per- 
severing advocate of the Irish Catholics. As 
an orator, he ranks among the first of modern 
times ; and as a writer, whether we consider 
the splendour of his diction, the richness and 
variety of his imagery, or the boundless stores 



176 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

of knowledge which he displays, it must be ac- 
knowledged that there are few who equal and 
none who transcend him. Burke was a sin- 
cere believer in Christianity, and his noble 
mind was moulded and elevated by its pure 
and generous sentiments. Unlike some of his 
greatest contemporaries, he made neither the 
bottle nor the dice his household deities ; he 
had no taste for pursuits that kill time rather 
than pass it — * I have no time,^ said he, * to 
be idle.' His fame is spotless. Although in 
the judgment of the world he was the greatest 
statesman and orator of his own and perhaps 
of any age, his humility was even more rare 
and remarkable than his genius. He declined 
the honour of an interment in the great na- 
tional receptacle of illustrious men, Westmin- 
ster Abbey, and even forbade it in his will, 
assigning as his reason, " I have had in my 
life but too much of noise and compliment.' 
To the approach of death he submitted with a 
calm and Christian resignation, undisturbed 
by a murmur, hoping, as he said, to obtain the 
divine mercy through the intercession of a 
blessed Eedeemer, Avhich (in his own words) 
' he had long sought with unfeigned humilia- 
tion, and to which he looked with a trembling 
hope.' The first clause in his will marks, in 
a manner equally striking,his deliberate views 



EDMUND BURKE. 177 

and deepest feelings on this great subject, and 
is a sort of testamentary witness to the world 
of the truth and value of the gospel of Christ. 
* According to the ancient, good, and laudable 
custom, of which my heart and understanding 
recognise the propriety, I bequeath my soul to 
God, hoping for his mercy only through the 
merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
My body I desire to be buried in the church 
at Beaconsfield, near the bodies of my dearest 
brother and my dearest son, in all humility 
praying, that as we have lived in perfect unity 
together, we may together have a part in the 
resurrection of the just.' 

" There never was a more beautiful alliance 
between virtue and talents. All his concep- 
tions were grand, all his sentiments generous. 
The great leading trait of his character, and 
that which gave it all its energy and its colour, 
was that strong hatred of vice which is no 
other than the passionate love of virtue. It 
breathes in all his writings ; it was the guide 
of all his actions. But even the force of his 
eloquence was insufficient to transfuse it into 
the weaker or perverted minds of his contem- 
poraries. Mr. Burke was too superior to the 
age in which he lived.'' 
12 



178 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



JAMES NECKEK 

This great statesman lived in the same age 
with Edmund Burke, the subject of my last 
sketch ; and though his fortune was cast in in- 
iidel France, he has been compared, for the 
purity of his principles and the integrity of his 
character, with that great English statesman. 
The following sketch is from the Encyclopaedia 
of Eeligious Knowledge : — 

** James Necker, an eminent financier and 
religious statesman, the father of Madame de 
Stael, was born in 1732, at Geneva, and for 
many years carried on the business of a 
banker at Paris. His eulogy on Colbert, his 
treatise on the Corn laws and Trade, and 
some essays on the Eesources of France, in- 
spired such an idea of his talents for finance, 
that in 1776 he was appointed director of the 
treasury, and shortly after controller-gene- 
ral. Before his resignation, in 1781, he pub- 
lished a statement of his operations, addressed 
to the king ; and, while in retirement, he pro- 
duced a work on the Administration of the 
Finances, and another on the Importance of 
Eeligious Opinions. The latter work, not- 
withstanding some imperfections, is worthy of 
immortality. It has been translated into 



JAMES NECKER. 179 

English. He was re-installed in the con- 
troUership in 1788, and advised the convoca- 
tion of the states general ; was abruptly dis- 
missed, and ordered to quit the kingdom, in 
July, 1789, but was almost instantly recalled, 
on account of the ferment which his departure 
excited in the public mind. Necker, however, 
soon became as much an object of antipathy 
to the fickle people as he had been of their 
idolatry, and in 1790 he left France forever. 
M. Necker was a decided Protestant, and 
worthy of better treatment than papal and in- 
fidel France was disposed to give him. In 
1798, he published a work of much interest 
on the French Ee volution ; and in 1800, his 
last great and eloquent work on the Eeligious 
View of Morality, in three volumes. Necker 
and Burke belong to the same class of men. 
He died at Copet, in Switzerland, in 1804. 
The whole of his works form fifteen volumes." 



180 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY — ^EDMUND SPENSER — SIR PHILIP SID- 
NEY—JOHN MILTON JOHN DENHAM WENTWORTH DIL- 
LON — JOHN, EARL OF ROCHESTER ABRAHAM COWLEY 

EDMUND WALLER — JOHN PHILLIPS MATTHEW PRIOR — 

NICHOLAS ROWE ALEXANDER POPE JAMES THOMSON — 

WILLIAM COLLINS — WILLIAM COWPER — ^JAMES BEATTIE 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH — WALTER SCOTT — EDMUND SMITH 
WILLIAM KING CHARLES MONTAGUE, EARL OF HALI- 
FAX ^JOHN HUGHES SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE ELIJAH 

FENTON NICHOLAS BOILEAU ^FENELON. 

It has been said, " the sweetest poets that 
have ever sung have been Christians/' And 
is it so ? I doubt not but some have heard so 
much of Byron and Shelley, (almost the only 
infidel English poets whose names are on re- 
cord,) as to come to the conclusion, that all 
the master poets of the world have been scep- 
tics and unbelievers. I propose to present the 
reader with sketches of some of the Christian 
poets ; but first I am disposed to present a 
short notice of one of these sons of song, 
admired by the atheist and the freethinker — 
a notice too which will present a scene in 
which the other also acts a part. We some- 
times get a stronger view of truth, or of moral 
beauty, by contrast. 



PERCY BYSSIIE SHELLEY. 181 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 

Was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, 
of Sussex, England. At the age of thirteen, 
he was sent to Eaton, and at sixteen, to the 
University of Oxford, where he soon dis- 
tinguished himself by the publication of a 
pamphlet entitled, '* The necessity of Athe- 
ism ;^' for which he was expelled from the 
university. He soon left his father's house 
for London, where he eloped with a lady 
younger than himself, with whom he took up 
his residence in Edinburgh for a time, and 
afterwards passed over to Ireland. On form- 
ing this connexion, his father broke off all 
communication with his son ; and after the 
birth of two children, the young couple sepa- 
rated, as is said, " by mutual consent,^' upon 
which Mrs. Shelley committed suicide. 

Shelley then married again ; after which 
his atheism and irreligion became so notori- 
ous, that his children were taken from him by 
a decree of the lord chancellor. He soon quit 
England for Switzerland, where he formed an 
intimate acquaintance with Byron, after he 
too had changed his native land, and had be- 
come a wanderer from his friends, as well as 
from all the restraints of virtue. But their 



182 CHRISTIAN BIOaRAPHY. 

friendship was broken by the early death of 
Shelley. And how did he die ? " He returned 
from Pisa to Leghorn, for the purpose of 
taking a sea excursion — an amusement to 
which he was much attached. During a vio- 
lent storm the boat was swamped, and the 
party on board were all drowned." After 
reading this, which is all the information I 
have on the subject, I feel assured, that the 
thoughtful reader will pause, and still inquire 
with himself, — -How did he die ? 

Of what became of his body, we have a 
more full account. A party, of whom Byron 
was one, afterwards found his body partly de- 
composed on the shore. They determined to 
burn the remains ; and, as if in contempt of 
Christianity, they combined with this heathen 
ceremony whatever of heathen rites could, in 
their estimation, dignify the scene ; and thus 
poured upon the burning body what they 
called " franhineense and wine." The burn- 
ing over, and the ashes gathered up, they 
dined, they drank to intoxication, and as they 
returned to Leghorn, the quiet stillness of the 
Italian night was broken by the shouts of 
their drunken midnight revelry. But lest I 
should be thought to exaggerate, I will give 
you the whole from GaWs Life of Byron : — 

" Mr. Shelley's body was found near Via 



PERCY BYSSIIE SHELLEY. 183 

Riggio, and, being greatly decomposed, and 
unfit to be removed, it was determined to re- 
duce the remains to ashes, that they might 
be carried to a place of sepulture. Accord- 
ingly preparations were made for the burning. 
Wood in abundance was found on the shore, 
consisting of old trees and the Avreck of ves- 
sels : the spot itself was well suited for the 
ceremony. The magnificent bay of Spezia 
was on the right, and Leghorn on the left, at 
equal distances of about two-and-twenty miles. 
The headlands project boldly far into the sea ; 
in front lie several islands, and behind dark 
forests and the cliffy Apennines. Nothing 
was omitted that could exalt and dignify the 
mournful rites with the associations of classic 
antiquity — frankincense and wine were not 
forgotten. The weather was serene and beau- 
tiful, and the pacified ocean was silent, as the 
flame rose with extraordinary brightness. 
Lord Byron was present ; but he should him- 
self have desci*ibed the scene, and what he 
felt. 

" These antique obsequies were undoubted- 
ly affecting ; but the return of the mourners 
from the burning is the most appalling orgia, 
without the honour of crime, of which I have 
over heard. When the duty was done, and 
the ashes collected, they dined and drank. 



184 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

much together, and bursting from the calm 
mastery with which they had repressed their 
feelings during the solemnity, gave way to 
frantic exultation. They were all drunk ; 
they sung, they shouted, and their barouche 
was driven like a whirlwind through the forest. 
I can conceive nothing descriptive of the de- 
moniac revelry of that flight, but scraps of 
the dead man's own song of Faust, Me- 
phistophiles, and Ignis Fatuus, in alternate 
chorus.'' 

Being a man myself, I would fain have 
kept back this horrid picture of human de- 
pravity. But I wished to present a sketch 
from nature, of the weakness of human philo- 
sophy, and to show by facts how despicable 
and mean is man at his best estate, when he 
has broken away from the restraints of reli- 
gion. Long as this sketch is, I am willing 
the sceptic should cull from it any flower he 
can find, to twine about the brow of an infidel 
philosophy ! 



One of the limitations which I prescribed to 
myself when I undertook to furnish these 
sketches, should be borne in mind, which is, 
that no clergymen are to be noticed. I am 
^ aware that this excludes from the catalogue 



CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 185i 

of high names which I am presenting, some 
who best deserve a place in it. What depart- 
ment of literature or of science has not been 
advanced by clergymen? What station of 
honour has not been nobly filled — ^what place 
of active benevolence has not been usefully 
occupied by clergymen? Among the poetSy 
Blair, who wrote " The Graved and Watts, 
and Young, and the Wesleys, and Heber, and 
White — and how many more I know not, 
were clergymen. 

White\s poetic talents called forth a noble 
tribute even from Byron himself. But we 
pass them by ; their poetry is associated with 
the best feelings of our nature, and their 
names need no record, but in our hearts. 

Many of the poets too have been distin- 
guished in other departments of literature, or 
have filled stations of honour in their day ; so 
that their names have been already called up 
by other associations. Addison, and Lyttle- 
ton, and West, and Coleridge — all distin- 
guished as foeU — have already been noticed 
in these sketches. And the living poets also — 
how few of them are not devoted to the cause 
of morality and virtue ! But here, too, we find 
another limit set to our work. We have con- 
fined ourselves to sketching the dead and not 
the living. To our work then. 



186 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



EDMUND SPENSER. 



Spenser was one of England's four most 
eminent poets. The others are Chaucer, 
Shakspeare, and Milton. Qhaucer^ who has 
been called " the day star and the father of 
English poetry/' has left the record of his at- 
tachment to Christianity, in the exile and 
imprisonment he suffered for his adherence 
to the doctrines of Wiclif. The defects in 
Shakspeare^ B character, are read in the blem- 
ishes which everywhere mar the beauty of his 
noble productions. And of Milton we shall 
speak hereafter. 

" Our celebrated Spenser P says Simpson, 
*' though a man of dissipation in his youth, in 
his more advanced years entered into the in- 
terior of religion, and in the two hymns on 
*' Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty, ^^ has 
expressed all the height and depth of Chris- 
tian experience : — 

" Then slialt thou feel thy spirit so possest, 
And ravish^i with devouring great desire 
Of his dear self, that shall thy feeble breast 
Inflame with love, and set thee all on fire 
With burning zeal, through every part entire, 
That in no earthly thing thou shalt delight, 
But in his sweet and amiable sight. 



SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 187 

Then shall thy ravished soul inspired be 
With heavenly thoughts, far above human skill, 
And thy bright radiant eyes shall plainly see 
The idea of his pure glory present still 
Before thy face, that all thy spirits shall fill 
With sweet enragement of celestial love, 
Kindled through sight of those fair things above/' 

" Spenser's religion, we see from the above 
extracts, is a religion of feeling. This too 
is unquestionably the religion of the Bible. 
' Whom having not seen, ye love ; in whom, 
though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye 
rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of 
glory.' " 

He died in 1598, and was interred in West- 
minster Abbey, near Chancey. 



SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 

Was a friend and patron of Spenser. He was 
also a poet of great power of thought and de- 
scription ; and is described by the writers of 
that age as the most perfect model of an ac- 
complished gentleman that could be formed 
even in imagination. He possessed fine tal- 
ents, was well educated, and at the age of 
twenty-one was sent by Queen Elizabeth, as 
her ambassador, to the Emperor of Germany, 
When dying of a wound received at the bat- 
tle of Zutphen, ho took leave of his brotlior in 



188 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

these words : " Love my memory ; cherish my 
friends.; but above all, govern your will and 
affections by the will and affections of your 
Creator. In me behold the end of this world, 
with all her vanity/^ 

What attention he had paid to religion dur- 
ing his life, I know not ; it seems that at life's 
close, he became serious and thoughtful. 
May the gay or careless reader become 
thoughtful, before that dark hour shall come 
upon him ! 



JOHN MILTON 

Was born in London, 1608, and is perhaps 
the most renowned of English poets. His 
chief production is the Paradise Lost ; and of 
this immortal work Dr. Johnson has said : 
" Here is a full display of the united force of 
study and genius ; of a great accumulation of 
materials with judgment to digest, and fancy 
to combine them. Milton was able to select 
from nature or from story, from ancient fable 
or from modern science, whatever could illus- 
trate or adorn his thoughts, — an accumula- 
tion of knowledge, impregnated by mind, fer- 
mented by study, and sublimed by imagina- 
tion.^' He adds : " Milton seems to have been 
well acquainted with his own genius, and to 



JOHN MILTON. 189 

know what it was that nature had bestowed 
on him — more than on others — the power of 
displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, 
darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the 
dreadful. The characteristic quality of his 
poem is sublimity. He sometimes descends 
to the elegant, but his element is the great. 
He can occasionally invest himself with grace, 
but his natural post is gigantic loftiness. He 
can please when pleasure is required ; but it 
is his peculiar power to astonish.^^ 
Addison says : — 

** Whatever Ms pen describes I more than see, 
Whilst every verse, array M in majesty, 
Bold and sublime, my whole attention draws, 
And seems above the critic^s nicer laws. 
How are you struck with terror and delight, 
When angel with archangel copes in fight ! 
When great Messiah^s outspread banner shines, 
How does the chariot rattle in his lines ! 
What sound of brazen wheels, what thunders, scare 
And stun the reader with the din of war ! 
With fear my spirits and my blood retire. 
To see the seraphs sunk in clouds of fire ; 
But when, with eager steps, from hence I rise, 
And view the first gay scenes of Paradise^ 
What tongue, what words of rapture can express 
A vision so profuse of pleasantness ?^' 

Milton had a full conviction of the truth of 
Christianity ; and most of his writings are of 
a religious character. And, indeed, the spirit 



190 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

witli which he undertook the Paradise Lost, 
may be seen in the following remarks. After 
promising to undertake something — he yet 
knows not what — that may be of use and 
honour to his country, he says : '' This is not 
to be obtained but by devout prayer to that 
eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utter- 
ance and knowledge, and sends out his sera- 
phim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to 
touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. 
To this must be added, industrious and select 
reading, steady observation, and insight into 
all seemly and generous arts and affairs ; till 
which in some measure be compassed, I refuse 
not to sustain this expectation.^^ 

Milton regarded the Holy Scriptures with 
the most profound veneration. He says : 
*' There are no songs comparable to the songs 
of Zion, no orations equal to those of the 
prophets, and no politics like to those which 
the Scriptures teach. '^ 

It was with the sublime character of such 
men as Milton in view, that Cowper penned 
these lines: — 

" Piety lias found 
Friends in the friends of science, and true prayer 
Has flowed from lips wet with Castalian dews. 
Such was thy wisdom, Neivton, child-like sage ! 
Sagacious reader of the works of God, 
And in his ivord sagacious. Such, too, thine, 



WENTWOKTH DILLON. 191 

Milton, whose genius had angelic wings, 
And fed on manna. And such thine, in whom 
Our British Themis gloried with just cause, 
Immortal Hale I for deep discernment praised, 
And sound integrity, not more than formed 
For sanctity of manners undefiled/' 



SIR JOHN DENHAM, 

Says Johnson, " is deservedly considered one 
of the fathers of English poetry/' The same 
writer has said : " He appears, whenever any 
serious question comes before him, to have 
been a man of piety. He consecrated his 
poetical powers to religion, and made a metri- 
cal version of the Psalms of David/' His 
poetical fame rests chiefly on his Cooper^ s Hill 

WENTWORTH DILLON, 

Earl of Koscommon, acquired his poetic fame 
mainly by his translations ; but these pos- 
sessed such uncommon excellence, as to call 
forth from Addison this deserved compli- 
ment : — 

" Nor must Roscommon pass neglected by, 
That makes even rules a noble poetry — 
Rules whose deep sense and heavenly numbers show 
The best of critics, and of poets too/' 

Indeed, he is perhaps the only correct writer 
of verse before Addison's time ; and Poi>e has 



192 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

celebrated him as the only moral writer of 
King Charles's reign : — 

" Unhappy Dryden ! in all Charles's days 
Roscommon only boasts unspotted lays.'' 

These poets both lived in a licentious and a 
trifling age — the age of Buckingh am. Though 
believers, their piety was not strongly marked. 
The latter of these noblemen especially did 
not die as a pious man ought to die. At the 
moment in which he expired, he uttered, with 
an energy of voice that expressed the most 
fervent devotion, two lines of his own version 
of " Dies Irae :^^ — 

" My God, my Father, and my Friend, 
Do not forsake me in my end.'' 

He died in 1684, and was buried with great 
pomp in Westminster Abbey. But what 
mockery is the pomp of a burial, compared 
with the triumph which often marks the 
Christianas dying hour ! I would rather have 
my bones thrown out, with those of Wiclif, 
upon a dung-hill, than have the world in 
doubt whether I were to have a part in the 
first resurrection. 



JOHN, EARL OF ROCHESTER. 193 



JOHN, EARL OF ROCHESTER. 

John Wilmot, afterwards Earl of Eochester, 
was born April 10, 1647, in Oxfordshire, Eng- 
land. After a grammatical education at the 
school of Burford, he entered a nobleman into 
Wadham College, in 1G59, at twelve years of 
age ; and in 1661, at fourteen, was, with some 
other persons of high rank, made master of 
arts, by Lord Clarendon, in person. 

His poetical fame has given him a place in 
Johnson's '' Lives of the English Poets,'' and 
Hazlitt, in his critical list of British Poets, 
commends his wit, when he remarks, that 
" his verses cut and sparkle like diamonds." 

Eochester flourislied in the reign of King 
Charles, Avith whom he was a great favourite. 
This was a corrupt and licentious period in 
English history, and Dr. Johnson has well de- 
picted its influence on this accomplished young 
nobleman. 

" He had very early an inclination to in- 
temperance, which he totally subdued in his 
travels ; but, when he became a courtier, he 
unhappily addicted himself to dissolute and 
vicious company, by which his p!:inciples were 
corrupted, and his inanners depraved. He 
lost all sense of religious restraint, and, lind- 

13 



194 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

iiig it not convenient to admit the authority 
of laws which he was resolved not to obey, 
sheltered his wickedness behind infidelity. 
As he excelled in that noisy and licentious 
merriment which wine excites, his companions 
eagerly encouraged him in excess, and he will- 
ingly indulged it, till, as he confessed to Dr. 
Burnet, he w^as for five years together con- 
tinually drunk, or so much inflamed by fre- 
quent ebriety, as in no interval to be master 
of himself Thus, in a course of drunken 
gayety and gross sensuality, with intervals of 
study perhaps yet more criminal, with an 
avowed contempt of all decency and order, a 
total disregard of every moral, and a resolute 
denial of every religious obligation, he lived 
worthless and useless, and blazed out his youth 
and his health in lavish voluptuousness, till, 
at the age of one-and-thirty, he had exhausted 
the fund of life, and reduced himself to a state 
of weakness and decay.^^ 

So much for his course of sin. But I can- 
not avoid delaying here long enough to in- 
quire what would be gained to the cause of 
infidelity, if, instead of being able to record 
his reformation, and thus to set him down as a 
Christian, he had persevered in his atheism 
and his drunkenness, and thus added to a 
life of vice and of wretchedness, a death of 



JOHN, EARL OF ROCHEvSTER. llJo 

horror and of woes? Yet tliis is the only 
difference between the case under considera- 
tion, and that of most of those who die, as well 
as live, in unbelief. 

At this time he became acquainted with 
Bishop Burnet, through whose instrumentality 
he was reclaimed from his errors, became a 
believer in the truths of Christianity, and 
submitted to be saved by faith in Jesus Christ. 
After it had pleased God to fill his mind with 
peace and joy in believing, he would say : " O 
blessed God, can such a horrid creature as I 
am be accepted by thee, who have denied thy 
being, and contemned thy power ? Can there 
be mercy and pardon for me ? Will God own 
such a wretch as I am?^' And during a fit of 
sickness that ensued, he said : " Shall the un- 
speakable joys of heaven be conferred on me ? 
O mighty Saviour, never but through thine 
infinite love and satisfaction ! O never, but 
by the purchase of thy blood V^ Adding, *' That 
with all abhorrence he reflected upon his 
former life, that from his heart he repented 
of all that folly and madness of which he had 
been guilty. ^^ 

One of his companions coming to see him 
on his death-bed, he said to him : " O remem- 
ber that you contemn God no more. He is an 
avenging God, and will visit you for your sins; 



196 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

and will, I hope, in mercy toucli your con- 
science, sooner or later, as lie has done mine. 
You and I have been friends and sinners to- 
gether a great while, therefore I am the more 
free with you. We have been all mistaken in 
our conceits and opinions ; our persuasions 
have been false and groundless ; therefore I 
pray God grant you repentance/^ 

When he drew towards the last stage of 
sickness, he said : '^ If God should spare me 
yet a little longer time here, I hope to bring 
glory to his name, proportionable to the dis- 
honour I have done to him in my whole past 
life, and particularly by my endeavours to con- 
vince others, and to assure them of the danger 
of their condition, if they continue impenitent, 
and to tell them how graciously God hath 
dealt with me.'^ 

And when he came within still nearer views 
of dissolution, about three or four days before 
it, he said : " I shall now die ; but O ! what 
unspeakable glories do I see ! What joys, be- 
yond thought or expression, am I sensible of ! 
I am assured of God's mercy to me, through 
Jesus Christ ! O, how I long to die, and to be 
with my Saviour V' 

For the admonition of others, and to undo, 
as much as was in his power, the mischief of 
his former conduct, he subscribed the follow- 



JOHN, EARL OF ROCHESTER. 197 

ing recantation, and ordered it to be published 
after his death : — 

'' For the benefit of all those whom I may 
have drawn into sin, by my example and en- 
couragement, I leave to the world this my last 
declaration, which I deliver in the presence of 
the great God, who knows the secrets of all 
hearts, and before whom I am now appearing 
to be judged: that from the bottom of my soul 
I detest and abhor the whole course of my 
former wicked life ; that I think I can never 
sufficiently admire the goodness of God, who 
has given me a true sense of my pernicious 
opinions and vile practices, by which I have 
hitherto lived without hope and without God 
in the world, have been an open enemy to 
Jesus Christ, doing the utmost despite to the 
Holy Spirit of grace ; and that the greatest 
testimony of my charity to such is to warn 
them in the name of God, as they regard the 
welfare of their immortal souls, no more to 
deny his being or his providence, or despise his 
goodness ; no more to make a mock of sin, or 
contemn the pure and excellent religion of 
my ever-blessed Eedeemer, through whose 
merits alone, I, one of the greatest of sinners, 
do yet hope for mercy and forgiveness. Amen/' 

Thus died, in the thirty-third year of liis 
age, the celebrated Earl of Rochester. 



198 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



ABRAHAM COWLEY 



WxA.s born in the city of London, in 1618. 
Hazlitt says, *' Cowley is a writer of great 
sense, ingenuity, and learning/^ Felton says, 
that '* Cowley was beloved by every muse that 
he courted ; and that he has rivalled the an- 
cients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.'^ 
And Johnson says : ''It may be affirmed, with- 
out any encomiastic fervour, that he brought 
to his poetic labours a mind replete with learn- 
ing, and that his pages are embellished with 
all the ornaments which books could supply ; 
that he was the first who imparted to English 
numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, 
and the gayety of the less ; that he was equally 
qualified for sprightly sallies, and for lofty 
flights ; that he Avas among those who freed 
translation from servility, and instead of fol- 
lowing his author at a distance, walked by his 
side ; and that if he left versification yet im- 
provable, he left likewise from time to time 
such specimens of excellence as enabled suc- 
ceeding poets to improve it/^ Sprat, his bio- 
grapher, says : ^' In his Latin poems he has 
expressed to admiration all the numbers of 
verses and figures of poetry that are scattered 
up and down among the ancients. There is 



ABRAHAM COWLEY. 199 

hardly to be found in them all any good 
fashion of speech, or colour of measure, but 
he has comprehended it and given instances 
of it, according as his several arguments re- 
quired either a majestic spirit, or a passionate, 
or a pleasant. This is the more extraordinary 
in that it was never yet performed by any 
single poet of the ancient Romans themselves.'^ 
Addison, and a host of others, have bestowed 
on his productions similar praise. 

Among his writings is a '' Sacred Poem of 
the Troubles of David, in four books,'' Avhich, 
had he lived, he intended to have extended to 
twelve books, thus forming a complete epic. 
And we have his opinion of the Bible, where 
he says, '' All the books of the Bible are either 
already most admirable and exalted pieces of 
poetry, or are the best materials in the world 
for it> 

Some seven or eight years before his death, 
" at a time," says his biographer, ''when, if any 
ambitious or covetous thoughts had remained 
in his mind, he might justly have expected to 
have them readily satisfied, he gave over all 
pursuit of honour and riclies, and went into 
retirement. During this recess his mind was 
rather exercised on what was to come, tlian 
what was past ; he suffered no more business 
nor cares of life to come near liim, than what 



200 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

were enougli to keep his soul awake, but uot 
vto disturb it. Some few friends and books, 
a cheerful heart and innocent conscience, were 
his constant companions. His poetry, indeed, 
he took with him, but he made that an ancho- 
rite, as well as himself; he only dedicated it 
to the service of his Maker, to describe the 
great images of religion and virtue, wherewith 
his mind abounded.^^ 

*' His body was attended to Westminster 
Abbey by a great number of persons of the 
most eminent quality, and followed with the 
praises of all good and learned men. It lies 
near the ashes of Chaucer and Spenser, the 
two most famous English poets of former 
times. But whoever would do him right, 
should not only equal him to the principal 
ancient writers of our own nation, but should 
also rank his name among the authors of true 
antiquity, the best of the Greeks and Eomans. 
The king was pleased to bestow on him the 
best epitaph, when, upon the news of his death, 
his Majesty declared, that Mr, Coivley had not 
left a better man behind him in England,'' 



EDMUND WALLER. 201 



EDMUND WALLER 



Was born in 1G65, was educated at Cam- 
bridge, and was chosen, when scarce seventeen 
years of age, member of parliament — the last 
parliament of James I. ; and such was the ver- 
satility of his talents, that he was a favourite 
with Cromwell, with the second Charles, and 
with James II. Thus he was constantly in 
public life, and was much admired, though 
he had some weak points in his character. 

" As a poet,'^ says Lempriere, " Waller is 
entitled to the highest praise. He may be 
called, as has been observed, the parent of 
English verse, and the first who showed us 
that our language had beauty and numbers. 
The English tongue came into his hands like 
a rough diamond ; he polished it first, and 
to that degree, that all succeeding artists 
have admired the workmanship, without pre- 
tending to mend it.^^ And Addison, in his 
" Account of the greatest English Poets,'' 
makes the transition from Milton to Waller 
in the following lines : — 

"But now, my muse, a softer strain reliearse. 
Turn every line with art, and smooth thy verse ; 
The courtly Wallc?- next commands thy lays : 
Muse, tune thy verse, with art, to WaUe)''s praise.'^ 



202 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

It is related of him, that being once pre- 
sent, when the Duke of Buckingham was 
talking profanely before Kiiig Charles, he 
said to him, '' My Lord, I am a great deal 
older than your Grace, and have, I believe, 
heard more arguments for atheism than ever 
your Grace did ; but I have lived long enough 
to see there is nothing in them, and so I hope 
your Grace Avill/^ 

Dr. Johnson bears the following testimony 
to his piety : — " Having now attained an age 
beyond which the laws of nature seldom suffer 
life to be extended, otherwise than by a fu- 
ture state, he seems to have turned his mind 
upon preparation for the decisive hour, and 
therefore consecrated his poetry to devotion. 
It is pleasing to discover that his piet}^ was 
without weakness ; that his intellectual powers 
continued vigorous ; and that the lines which 
he composed, when ' he, for age, could neither 
read nor write,'' are not inferior to the effusions 
of his youth. As the disease (dropsy) in- 
creased upon him, he composed himself for 
his departure ; and calling upon Dr. Birch to 
give him the holy sacrament, he desired his 
children to take it with him, and made an 
earnest declaration of his faith in Chris- 
tianity.^^ 



MATTHEW PRIOR. 203 



JOHJSr PHILLIPS 

Was born in 1676, and is honourably noticed 
as a poet by Johnson, Hazlitt, and others ; 
and he has a monument in Westminster 
Abbey. 

" Phillips,^' says Johnson, '' has been always 
praised, without contradiction, as a man mo- 
dest, blameless, and pious ; Avho bore narrow- 
ness of fortune without discontent, and tedi- 
ous and painful maladies without impatience ; 
beloved by those who knew him, but not am- 
bitious to be known.^' 



MATTHEW PRIOR 

Was born in 1664, had some eminence as a 
poet, and was also buried in Westminster Ab- 
bey. I have no evidence of his piety. Dr. 
Johnson says : " His opinions, so far as the 
means of judging are left us, seem to have 
been correct.^^ His good taste, at least, is ex- 
hibited, in the remark, that " the writings of 
Solomon afford subjects for finer poems in 
every kind, than have yet appeared in tlie 
Greek, Latin, or any modern language.'^ 



204 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



jSriCHOLAS ROWE, 

Poet laureate of England, in the days of Ad- 
dison, "• after having read most of the Greek 
and Roman histories in their original lan- 
guages, and most that are written in English, 
French, Italian, and Spanish, was fully per- 
suaded of the truth of revealed religion, ex- 
pressed it upon all occasions, took great de- 
light in divinity and ecclesiastical history, 
and died at last like a Christian and philoso- 
pher, with an absolute resignation to the will 
of God/^ 



ALEXANDER POPE. 

Of Pope various sentiments are entertained. 
The probability is, that his religious opinions, 
so far as relates to the great doctrines of 
Christianity, were about as correct as those 
of most persons Avho are not pious. 

Johnson says of him : " The religion in 
which he lived and died was that of the 
Church of Pome, to which, in his correspon- 
dence with Pacine, he professes himself a sin- 
cere adherent. That he was not scrupulously 
pious in some part of his life^ is known by 
many idle and indecent applications of sen- 



ALEXANDER POPE. 205 

tences taken from the Scriptures — a mode of 
merriment which a good man dreads for its 
profaneness, and a witty man disdains for its 
easiness and vulgarity. But into whatever 
levities he has been betrayed, it does not ap- 
pear that his principles were ever corrupted, 
or that he ever lost his belief in revelation.'^ 
EufFhead says : " Though a Catholic, as is 
supposed, to the day of his death. Pope was 
convinced that the Church of Rome had all 
the marks of that antichristian power predict- 
ed in the writings of the New Testament. 
And though he had not courage enough to 
profess himself a Protestant, he was firmly 
persuaded of the truths of Christianity.'' It 
is known that, in the latter part of his life, 
he attended the services of the Eno;lish 
Church. 

The estimation in Avliich, as a writer and 
man of taste, he held the Bible, is expressed 
by himself in the following language : — *' Tlie 
pure and noble, the graceful and dignilied 
simplicity of language, is nowhere in such per- 
fection as in Scripture and Homer ; and the 
whole Book of Job, with regard both to sub- 
limity of thought and morality, exceeds be- 
yond all comparison, the most noble parts of 
Horner.'^ 



206 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



JAMES THOMSON, 

Author of ^' The Seasons/' has been styled by 
a critic, " the best and most original of our 
descriptive poets.'' He has a monument in 
Westminster Abbey ; but in his Seasons he 
has a more imperishable monument to his 
memory. 

He was trained for the ministry ; but after 
studying divinity for a time, he laid it aside 
for the cultivation of the muses. A biogra- 
phical sketch now before me, says : " Thom- 
son in private life was an amiable, pious, and 
benevolent character, with great goodness of 
heart, and the most virtuous disposition ;" and 
Simpson, in his Plea for Religion, enumerates 
him among the believers. 

Lord Lyttleton, who, it will be recollected, 
was himself a poet and a Christian, pays him 
the noble compliment, — that his works con- 
tained 

** No line which, dying, he could wish to blot." 



WILLIAM COLLINS. 207 



WILLIAM COLLINS. 



Says Hazlitt : ^' Among all our poets who have 
att^p.ipted only short pieces, Collins is proba- 
bly the one who has shown the most of the 
highest qualities of poetry, and who excites 
the most intense interest in the bosom of the 
reader. He soars into the regions of imagina- 
tion, and occupies the highest peaks of Par- 
nassus/^ His Ode on the Passions is the 
most popular. 

The early part of his life was somewhat 
irregular. But Johnson tells us of him, that 
'' his morals were pure, and his opinions pious.^^ 
He also relates of him, that in the latter part 
of liis mortal career, he withdrew from study, 
and travelled with no other book than an 
English Testament, such as children carry to 
school. When a friend took it in his hand, 
out of curiosity to see what companion a man 
of letters had chosen — *^ I have only one book,^^ 
said Collins, " but that is the best.'^ 



208 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



WILLIAM COWPER. 

Of the celebrated author of the Task, I select 
the following notice from the Encyclopi^clia 
of Eeligious Knowledge : — 

'^ Cowper is a poet of varied powers : he is 
by turns playful and pathetic, tender and sar- 
castic ; in some instances, he rises to sub- 
limity ; and in picturesque delineation he has 
no rival but Thomson, and he generally sur- 
passes him in elegance. His other characte- 
ristics are simplicity, individuality, transpa- 
rency of ideas, bold originality, singular purity, 
and experimental Christian piety. All his 
poems bear marks of his mature authorship, 
his accurate rather than extensive scholar- 
ship, and his unwearied desire to benefit man- 
kind. His Christian life, though oppressed 
by disease, was pure, useful, and lovely ; and 
even while suffering under the deranged idea 
that he was an exception to God's general 
plan of grace, — a deranged idea which hung 
like a cloud over his soul during the last years 
of his life, — it is delightful to perceive that it 
had no tendency to lead him aside from the 
path of rectitude, or to relax in the least his 
efforts to maintain the life of religion in his 
soul. His last accents were those of most 



JAMES BEATTIE. 209 

perfect and touching acquiescence in the will 
of God, with whom, we doubt not, his harassed 
spirit is now at rest. What a moment was 
that which dispelled forever its gloom V 



JAMES BEATTIE 

Has been numbered among the most distin- 
guished poets, as the author of " The Min- 
strel/' His fame, however, rests not solely 
on his poetical compositions. He was born in 
1735, received his degree of Master of Arts in 
1753, and in 1760 Avas appointed a professor 
of philosophy in the college w^here he was edu- 
cated. In 1770, he received the degree of 
LL. D. from King's College, Aberdeen ; and 
from 1773, he received a pension from tlie 
king. Among his prose works, are found the 
justly celebrated '' Essay on the Nature and 
Immutability of Truth,'' an '' Essay on Me- 
mory and Imagination," a " Treatise on the 
Evidences of Christianity," and '' Elements of 
Moral Science." 

The following tribute is from Jones's Chris- 
tian Biography : — " In every situation of life 
Dr. Beattie acquitted himself with credit. He 
performed his duties to his fellow-creatures 
and his God with integrity, zeal, and delight. 
In his early years he was light and frivolous ; 



14 



210 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

but, as he became more acquainted with the 
nature ^f his own heart, his conduct was con- 
sistent, and uniformly correct. For the cause 
of truth, Christianity, and science, he was a 
zealous and able advocate. Many of his pupils 
have acknowledged their obligations to him ; 
and the present and succeeding generations 
will cheerfully unite in such acknowledg- 
ments. His style was chaste ; liis sentences 
uniformly simple ; his poetry was very beauti- 
ful ; and it is to be regretted that so small a 
part of his time was spent in the cultivation 
of the muses." 

It may be worth while to add his opinion 
of one of the books composing that volume, 
which many a one, in his ignorance, thinks 
not worth his perusal : — '' Of the divine na- 
ture, the Psalms of David contain the most 
magnificent descriptions that the soul of man 
can comprehend. The one hundred and fourth 
Psalm in particular, displays the power and 
goodness of Providence, in creating and pre- 
serving the world, and the various tribes of 
animals in it, with such majestic brevity and 
beauty, as it is in vain to look for in any hu- 
man composition." 



WALTER SCOTT. 211 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

"Was born in 1770, in Cumberland, Eng- 
land. He graduated from St. John's College, 
Cambridge, about the year 1787, and soon 
after became intimate with Coleridge, with 
whom he passed much time in literary and 
other pursuits. He is the celebrated founder 
of what is called the Lake school of poetry, 
and is also entitled to the far more honourable 
appellation of Christian poet^ So says the 
Encyclopsedia of Keligious Knowledge ; and 
it is marvellous indeed, that any biographical 
writer should ever have conceived that the 
fame of a man arising from the possession of 
any other excellence, could eclipse that arising 
from his religious character. Yet so it is that 
we are often left to infer the religious charac- 
ter of good men, by some mere incidental re- 
mark of their biographers. 

WALTER vSCOTT. 

The following remarks on the productions of 
this great man, cannot but be read with in- 
terest. Sir Walter was neitlier an infidel nor 
a sceptic ; would that he liad adorned Chris- 
tianity more by his writings I 



212 CHRISTIAN BIOaRAPHY. 

" Scott^s literary character rests almost ex- 
clusively upon liis peculiar power of combin- 
ing and embellishing past events, and his skill 
in delineating natural character. Memory, 
imagination, and the love of antiquity, were 
his intellectual traits, and these have been de 
veloped in every variety of form with a won 
derful opulence. His diction is rich, but far 
from pure or elegant. His writings abound 
with benevolence, with humour, and lively 
illustration ; yet they rarely open glimpses of 
Christian excellence, or touch upon the higher 
destinies reserved for man as seen in the light 
of divine revelation. An author of seventy 
volumes of popular literature, and a profes- 
sor, no doubt sincerely, of Christian faith, a 
member of the Church of England, might 
surely have made some higher offering to reli- 
gion than even the purity of his example, and 
the general moral tendency of his writings. 

*' His fictitious works are entirely free, it is 
true, from the morah blemishes of Byron and 
Moore, or even of Shakspeare and Pope — they 
teach neither licentiousness, pride, envy, nor 
misanthropy ; they abound in sound sense, and 
practical wisdom for everyday life — but we 
fear they must be pronounced sadly deficient 
in the wisdom for eternity. Yet the author 
knew and felt there was a higher wisdom, as 



WALTER SCOTT. 213 

is manifest from his Lay Sermons on the 
atonement, &c., and his valuable letters on 
demonology and witchcraft. And in his ac- 
count of his own life, there occurs a passage 
which is worthy of record here, as much for 
the sake of his readers as our own. ' It was 
my first resolution,' he observes, * to keep as 
far as was in my power abreast of society ; 
continuing to maintain my place in general 
company, without yielding to the very natu- 
ral temptation of narrowing myself to what 
is called literary society. By doing so, I 
imagined I should escape the besetting sin of 
listening to language which, from one motive 
or another, ascribes a very undue degree of 
consequence to literary pursuits, as if they 
were indeed the business rather than the 
amusement of life !' Till literature becomes 
impregnated with a more Christian sj)irit, 
this is the true estimate of its value ; and this, 
doubtless, accounts for Sir Walter\s habit of 
depreciating conscientiously the merit of his 
own large contributions to it. A higher praise 
awaits that glorious genius yet to appear, 
who, with equal power to win the public atten- 
tion, shall spread abroad a literature, like the 
beautiful parables of our Lord, adapted not 
merely to please, but to reform, bless, and 
save mankind. '^ 



214 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 

The above judicious remarks, quoted from 
the Elicyclopaedia of Eeligious Knowledge, 
place Scott where I would leave him. He was 
a believer and a member of the Christian 
Church ; and how many others, like him, with- 
hold from the service of their Creator that 
which he has lent them. Wealth, and time, 
and health, and strength, as well as talents, 
are the gifts of Him in whom we live and 
move and have our being ; and he who with- 
holds from His service any of these, in the 
impressive language of Scripture, robs God. 



EDMUND SMITH 

Was a man of great acquirements. I find the 
following statement concerning him. I wish 
more could have been said in his praise : — 
** He had mingled with the gay world, with- 
out exemption from its vices or its follies, but 
had never neglected the cultivation of his 
mind ; his belief of revelation was unshaken ; 
his learning preserved his principles ; he grew 
first regular, and then pious.^^ 



JOHN HUGHES. 215 



WILLIAM KING 

Also mingled too largely with the gay world 
for his best interests. It is said of him, liow- 
ever, that " though his life had not been with- 
out irregularity, his principles were pure and 
orthodox, and his death was pious.'^ 

CHARLES MONTAGUE, 

Earl of Halifax, at one time intended to 
take orders in the Church of England ; and 
though he changed his purposes, I am not 
aware that he ever changed his principles. 
His political elevation enabled him to become 
the patron of Addison, Steele, Pope, and Swift. 



JOHN HUGHES 

Was associated with the first literary writers 
of his day ; and contributed both to the ** Tat- 
ler,'' " Spectator,'' and "^ Guardian." His last 
literary performance was a tragedy. " On 
February 17, 1820, the play was represented, 
and the author died. He lived to liear that 
it was Avell received ; but paid no regard to 
the intelligence, being tlien wholly employed 
in the meditations of a departing Christian." 



216 CHRISTIAN BIOGKAPRY. 



SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE 

Was a very respectable poet ; but produced 
several works in the other departments of 
learning. The last work he published is " Na- 
tural Theology, or Moral Duties considered 
apart from Positive ; with some Observations 
on the Desirableness and the Necessity of a 
Supernatural Eevelation/^ He left behind 
him " The Accomplished Preacher, or an Essay 
upon Divine Eloquence,^^ which was printed 
after his death by Mr. White, of Nayland, in 
Essex, the minister who attended his death- 
bed, and testified the fervent piety of his last 
hours. His respect for the Bible as a mere 
literary work is expressed in the folloAving 
words : — " For sense, and for noble and sub- 
lime thoughts, the poetical parts of Scripture 
have an infinite advantage above all others 
put together.^^ 



ELIJAH FENTOK 

Of his speculative opinions I know nothing. 
Johnson says : "• Of his morals and his con- 
versation the account is uniform ; he was 
never named but with praise and fondness, as 
a man in the highest degree amiable and ex- 



NICHOLAS 130ILEAU. 217 

cellent.'^ Pope speaks of liis '' amiable, Chris- 
tian, and philosophical character/^ 



NICHOLAS BOILEAU 

Was born at Paris, in 1636 ; and at thirty 
years of age, the strength and harmony of his 
verse, the delicacy of his satire, and the energy 
of his style, had raised him above his poetical 
predecessors, and had made him the favourite 
of France and of Europe. Subsequently a 
pension was settled on him by the king. A 
biographer saj^s : — " After enjoying the fa- 
vours of liis sovereign, and all the honours 
which the French Academy, and the Academy 
of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres could be- 
stow, Boileau retired from public life, dissa- 
tisfied with the insincerity of the Avorld, and 
the profligacy of manners which he had satir- 
ized with spirit and truth, and he spent his 
time in literary privacy, in the society of a 
few select and valuable friends. ' He died, an 
example of great resignation and piety, March 
2, 1711, in his seventy-fifth year.^^ 

The Bible was Ms Book. Says he : " Every 
word and syllable of the Bible ought to be 
adored : it not only cannot be too much ad- 
mired, but it cannot be enougli admired.^' 



218 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 



FENELON, 

# 

The celebrated author of " Telemachus/' was 
Archbisliop and Duke of Cambray. His name 
is as immortal as the French language ; and 
is embalmed with his work, in almost all the 
languages of Europe. He was eminently 
pious. 



Here, for the present, I leave the Poets, at 
the same time leaving it to others to tell us 
of the virtues and the peaceful deaths of those 
who were unbelievers. If ever that denuncia- 
tion of the Almighty, — " This shall they have 
at my hand — thei/ shall lie down in sorrow/^ 
— was fearfully executed, it has been in the 
case of the unbelieving poets. Some of the 
poets of doubtful religious character, and 
some even claimed as deists, — were Catholics. 
Such were Garth, Dryden, and Moore, as well 
as Pope. 

THE END. 



WORKS PUBLISHED BY LANE & SCOTT, 

200 Mulberry-street, New-York. 



Peck on Perfection. 

The Scripture Doctrirfe of Christian Perfection Stated and 
Defended, with a Critical and Historical Examination 
of the Controversy, both Ancient and Modern ; also. 
Practical Illustrations and Advices : in a Series of Lec- 
tures. A new and improved edition. By Rev. George 
Peck, D. D. Fourth thousand. 

12mo., pp. 470. Muslin or sheep tO 75 

This norh forms jMrt of the course of study adopted hy the 
last General Conference. 

This work is well-timed, and Dr. Peck has conferred an im- 
portant favour upon the Christian public by its publication. 
The Wesleyan family are peculiarly indebted to him for the 
clear and able vindication of their views therein contained. 
— Northern Christian Advocate- 

We have read this work with great satisfaction, and recom- 
mend it to the public with a hearty good-will. It is tho- 
roughly Wesleyan throughout. — Southern Christian Adv. 

It is a book for the times, and will do much toward defending 
and promoting the great cause of holiness. — Western Chris- 
tian Advocate. 

A vein of hallowed piety and patient research is conspicuous 
tluoughout the volume. — {London) Wesleyan Methodist Mag. 

It is an elaborate discussion of the whole subject. The theo- 
ries of all ages are reviewed, objections answered, the way 
of its attainment stated, and inducements to it urged. — 
Zion's Herald. 

Watson (Bp.) and Leslie on the Evidences. 

Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters addressed 
to Thomas Paine, author of the "Age of Pteason." By 
Bishop Watson. To which is added, Leslie's Short and 
Easy Method with the Deists. Eleventh thousand. 

18mo., pp. 220. Sheep 80 30 

Bishop Watson's Apology has been widely circulated and 
much read, and, what is of still more consequence, is known 
to have been in many instances eminently useful. Wherc- 
ever, then, the poi.son of infidelity is spreading, those who 
are concerned to provide antidotes should not forget this 
valuai)lo and tried production, — Memoirs of Hishop Watson, 

^ — ^ 



I^_ 1^ 

WORKS PUBLISHED BY LANE & SCOTT, 

200 Mulberry-street, New-York. 



Carvosso, (William,) Life of. 

The Great Efficacy of Simple Faith in the Atonement of 
Christ, exemplified in a Memoir of Mr. William Car- 
vosso, sixty years a Leader in the Wesleyan Methodist 
Connexion. Written? by Himself, and edited by his 
Son. Fifty-fifth thousand. 

18mo., pp. 351, Muslin or sheep SO 45 

The popularity of this little volume may be inferred from the 
fact that, within a few years, fifty thousand copies have 
been sold in this country alone. The life of Carvosso is an 
evidence of the great efficacy of simple faith in the atone- 
ment of Christ. It shows us that without splendid talents, 
or much learning, a man may please God, and save souls. — 
Literary Register. 

Luther, Life of. 

The Life of Martin Luther. To which is prefixed an Ex- 
pository Essay on the Lutheran Reformation. By Geo. 
CuEiTT. With an Appendix, containing a Chronolo- 
gical Table of the principal Events occurring during 
the period of Luther's Life. With a Portrait. 8ixth 
thousand. 

12mo., pp. 340. Muslin or sheep .• tO 65 

The subject of this book is, for its real grandeur, unrivalled 
among the subjects of merely human history. It has so 
often been touched by the greatest masters tliat it requires 
uncommon courage to approach it, and uncommon talents 
to present it in its real greatness, and to surround it with 
its native splendours ; Mr. Cubitt, however, has not degraded 
his theme. This book is a spirited performance, and reflects 
honour upon the head and heart of the author. 

Garrettson, (Freeborn,) Life of 

Life of Rev. Freeborn Garrettson ; compiled from his print- 
ed and Manuscript Journals, and other authentic Docu- 
ments. By N. Bangs, D. D. Third tJiotisand. 

12mo., pp. 294. Muslin or sheep $0 60 

This book, and all such memorials of our fathers, should be 
read and re-read by each successive generation of Melh- 
odists. 



^- 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2005 

PreservationTechnologiei 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIOI 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 1 6066 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



oO 



